


Interlude - Reprieve

by infinitive (infiniteviking), kesomon



Series: Ram, Expanded [4]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Crying, Emotional Trauma, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, I am not nice to Ram in this At All, I am so very sorry, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Interlude, No Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, RP Thread Archive, Sad Ending, Temporary Amnesia, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25366543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteviking/pseuds/infinitive, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: The last thing Ram knows is the rage on Sark's face. He wakes up, and nothing is as it seems anymore.Coming to in the outlands of an unfamiliar system, coughing up liquid energy all over his User (hisUSER!), meeting his brother program (not to mention, a flock of bits too adorable to handle) - it's like a dream Ram doesn't want to wake up from. Except he's still dreaming in this place, and what he dreams, he doesn't like.All good things, as they say, do not last.(RP Thread Archival, see notes)
Relationships: Ram (Tron) & Roy Kleinberg
Series: Ram, Expanded [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/19505
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infiniteviking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteviking/gifts).



> NOTE TO Ram, Expanded FOLLOWERS: This interlude does not have to be read as part of the canon for the Ram, Expanded fic'verse. However, I wanted to include it as it is an important piece of formative writing for the 'verse. Contains references to events from preceding fics in the 'verse, particularly 'Seven Firsts', and Bit-headcanons from 'Energy'.
> 
> Disclaimer: _This is an archival of a grid_lined RP thread between Ram (ram-xr71), played by myself, and Ram (namesram) and Roy Kleinberg (heyalanhey), played by infiniteviking, fitting into the Ram, Expanded timeline. Canon Tron characters involved may be OOC due to differences in their AU universe timelines._
> 
> This fic/thread was co-written by myself and infiniteviking and as such is broken up in a thread-like pattern of POV-shift. Please do not let that discourage you from enjoying it! This interlude was explored while I was writing in the Ram, Expanded fic'verse as a possible bridge for XR to join the grid_lined continuity; ultimately, it was decided XR would return to his universe until the fic series was complete. Didn't quite happen that way, but we did get this massively painful angst-fest out of it. You can perhaps consider this the "alternate-universe-hallucination-dream-trope where someone wakes up in a padded cell and gets gaslit that 'your happy life is illusion'" portion of the series, only in reverse! because Tron is a fandom that is pain.
> 
> For my Ram, this fic is set during a particular segment of ch.7 of 'Seven Firsts', when he passes out on the decompiler and then wakes up alone in the isolation cells, having been repaired in the interim. For the Ram of the fics, none of these events are remembered, except maybe the sense of hollow loss and forgetting something important. 
> 
> Heed the tags and get the tissues, friends. This is going to be a heavy ride. (And, apologies in advance for poor writing. This is from 2013. I made no edits except basic grammar/spelling checks.)

  
_Image reference for the Cascade Energy Springs / Photo: Tumblr, unknown source (if you find it, let me know!)_

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_“I still feel excited during a match…that thrill when I come out the victor.”_

“Did you actually think you could accomplish something, conscript?”

_“How many did I kill, Tron? How many of us died at my hand because I was too involved to realise?”_

“Sixty of your fellow believers…nothing more but dust and static…How does it feel, knowing you were the reason behind their deaths?”

_“We’ve just lain down like dead bits at the feet of the MCP’s goons.”_

“You insignificant _glitch_ , you’re _nothing_.”

_“Words are just words. What we really need is some action.”_

“Tell me who helped you take out the generators.”

_“It’s just another set of calculations.”_

“Was it Tron?”

_“Tron! Where are you taking him? No! Let me go, you glitching fraggers! Tron! **Tron!** ”_

Ram sucked in a shuddering breath as his memory circuits glitched, the amount of electrical static coursing through his systems forcing the most recent of them to repeat and loop. He gritted his teeth and glanced up at Sark. The command program was straddling the fine line between anger and irrationality, coaxed by Ram’s constant jibes and sarcastic defiance.

That comment about interfacing with a lightcycle baton probably hadn’t helped.

It would take but a nudge to push him over one way or the other. Ram saw his opening and took it.

“There once was a program named Sark…”

The limerick triggered a fresh, blazing rush of pain as the decompiler activated. Raw electricity flooded his processors, locking up his systems, a silent scream trapped in his throat. His entire world shrunk to nothing but the sensation of pain, before Ram slid mercifully into shutdown.

_Tron…_

**Blackness.** Dark, warm, safe. Then, gradually, fading to dull light shining through his eyelids.

Ram felt like he was floating, cocooned in the shelter of some nameless entity, surrounding him – enveloping him. His systems felt sluggish, warm with an overabundance of power. Was this what it was to be derezzed?

Couldn’t be. He still hurt. Still ached, every limb and structural pixel. Diagnostic subroutines running on automatic alerted him to 20% system integrity and multiple circuit shorts, and an unusual, quickly-climbing rise in energy levels. And now the warm feeling was growing painful, his sensors suddenly overcharged. Far too hot. Far too much. _Too much._

Ram’s eyes snapped open and were met with blinding light. He sucked in a breath on reflex, and immediately choked, thrashing in the liquid environment he was surrounded by. Panic overtook his logic circuits. Error messages and warnings flashing behind his eyelids, the program clawed his way upwards, breaking the surface with a tremendous gasp.

He floundered to the edge of the glowing pool and hauled himself free, crawling just far enough on all fours to cut his connection to the flow of overwhelming power.

He then proceeded to retch up an incredible amount of liquid from his air circulators.

And then more from his power reservoirs, as his body rejected the sheer amount of raw energy it had been forced to imbibe. Ram was uncomfortably reminded of his first trip on a Solar Sailer and groaned, coughing wetly as the worst of it passed.

With a shaking hand, he reached up, tore his helmet off his head, and pressed a wet palm to his face. Energy dripped off his soaked curls and onto too-bright circuits, shoulders trembling as he fought to regulate his cooling subroutines.

_Breathe. Just breathe._

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a Bit.

Ram blinked. The Bit blinked back, or at least shifted its facets curiously. When Ram opened his mouth, it flared a startled, red-spiked _[NO!]_ and zipped away, joining a small cluster of its fellows on the other side of the energy spring.

.. _.Energy spring?_

Ram reached up and rubbed his eyes with a hand, squinting. Nope, yup; that was an energy spring. He lifted his head, eyes growing impossibly wide as he took in his surroundings for the first time.

A slow-flow well of energy had somehow re-shaped the silicon landscape, creating glittering tiers over which liquid energy spilled in shimmering ripples. Each ledge of the structure held various-sized pools, glowing turquoise blue against the black sky. Ram had crawled out of the bottom-most pool, the largest – though it was hardly half the size of most of the User swimming pools he’d seen while processing image files to go with insurance claims.

How he had gotten there was a mystery. Perhaps he had been too weak to go back to the games, and Sark had simply thrown his unconscious body into the pools in a new and inventive experiment to see how long it would take him to drown – or overcharge himself into crashing and derezzing.

The trouble with that theory was that _none_ of this was even remotely familiar. There _were_ _no_ energy springs like this in the Encom system; not with the MCP’s rationing and power-pinching. The ground he sat on was blacker, thrumming with life, and he hadn’t seen this many wild bits (as were floating near the well-developed patches of data-growth and crystal structures) in cycles.

Faced with the incomprehensibility of his situation, Ram shut his eyes and just tried to breathe, body wracked with after-tremors from the decompiler and his unceremonious swim in pure energy. His systems felt like they didn’t know whether they should be derezzing or overloading. Another tremor shook his frame and he grimaced, curling over and clutching his stomach. A hand braced against the ground kept him steady as he coughed, spat. _Deletion_. He _hated_ energy purges.

_[NO?]_

He glanced up; the Bit was back, and it had brought a few friends. Three tiny, semi-translucent child-bits, probably not more than a few microcycles detached from their parent crystals, bobbed closer, less wary and more curious than the older ones. Ram held out a wet hand to them; they dipped and brushed against the energy on his fingertips, absorbing it with feather-light touches.

 _/hello-hithere_ , he pinged at one of them. The little trio of infants squealed a series of delighted _[yes-yes-yes]_ es at the odd sensation, dancing out of reach, and Ram laughed hoarsely. That seemed to be as much interaction as the parent Bit would allow; it quickly herded its brood up with gentle _[NO]_ s, and ushered them back across the pool.

Ram watched them go with a pained smile, then groaned and slumped backwards, sprawling out and staring at the darkened sky. Maybe just a nano’s rest. That’s all he needed.

His eyes slid shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here out, POV Switches will occur whenever you see the symbol of **Ooo---oOo---ooO **.****

Roy was cursing furiously. Cursing the news that had greeted him on his return to the Free Grid, which had sent him haring off on the first lightjet he could find, because a Solar Sailer would take _too long_ ; cursing the stop he'd been forced to make on said placidly moving Sailer to recharge the jet for the rest of the trip; cursing the unlucky lightning bolt just out of the warp plane that had sent him on a careening spiral into the Outlands, and the wind and the wing (which he was pretty certain was not supposed to be on fire) that wouldn't let him back on course. Not to mention the distance to the City -- he would _hike_ it if necessary, he couldn't disappear out here, not with Alan and Flynn to worry about, and all of _his_ programs--  
  
The flicker of light deep in the darkness among the standing stones drew him like a beacon. Light, out here, meant energy -- possibly even enough to repair the jet, if he managed to land in one piece.  
  
Good plan. Or, well, at least _a_ plan.  
  
Roy gritted his teeth and somehow, going by the instruments and the soft light of the pools beneath him, managed to plow the jet down along a flat area that he realized almost too late was the rim of a cliff. The jet squeaked and shuddered as it stopped, and he was able to turn his attention to the wing, sending a quelling counterpulse along the warped circuit to nullify the amplitude and quench the sparks. The jet groaned and went dark, for which he was almost grateful as he careened out of the cockpit.  
  
Well. Any landing you walked away from, right?  
  
A brief check of the lightning damage revealed nothing he couldn't fix, given adequate energy. And there seemed to be plenty of that around. He could even fashion a gallon jug or something out of the raw material around him. Time enough to collapse after he got back to Tron City and checked in with--  
  
\--the prone figure lying unmoving near one of the springs, out of sight until he'd staggered around the corner of a tall standing stone, was so in line with his train of thought that he could only lurch to a stop, wondering if he was hallucinating.  
  
" _Ram_!?"  
  
Racing over, he knelt beside the program, automatically checking him over for physical damage, one hand cradling his cheek and the other settled gently on his shoulder to monitor his power cycles. Going by the archaic conscript armor, this Ram was from somewhere in the early eighties -- but where?  
  
"Ram, how did--?" There was no response, and Roy swallowed a lump in his throat, drew Ram's head and shoulders up onto his lap and detached the old-style disc he'd been lying on. "It's all right. I gotcha. You're gonna be okay."  
  
Other versions of this program had explained, gravely but with haunted eyes, how it had been that they'd met their ends back in what Roy had come to realize were most versions of Ram's life. He'd never wanted to see it, but he knew his program's code inside and out, and the palpable internal shorts and damaged circuitry didn't look good at all. Some of the energy could be grounded, some of the blocked pathways freed, but there was more destabilization here than even a User could fix externally. If this Ram was fighting the damage he'd taken in the tank crash, he might have very little time left.  
  
He wasn't going to derezz, though.  
  
Roy wouldn't let him.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Aside from a mild shudder as hyper-sensitive sensors registered the intruding touch of the User’s hands, the actuarial program didn’t stir as his head became pillowed by something other than the rough ground on which he lay.

Ram had slipped further than intended into standby as his internal repair subroutines tried to mend what they could, running off the excess power that was making his circuit array glow more brightly than usual. Despite the massive energy levels he’d drawn from the spring, which on their own would have fooled anyone into thinking he was just overcharged, his armour told a different story.

Though Ram was in no danger of deresolution thanks to the energy spring, Sark had never bothered to repair the damage Ram had taken during his and Tron’s impromptu revolution. The palm of his right hand was still a jagged mess of pixels, where he’d gripped his active disk far too tightly in his determination and overloaded the damage-protection protocols on his gloves. There were distinctive outlines of bruised and cracked circuitry, even a crack in his chest armour itself, where a light-staff had been slammed into his stomach and across his shoulders. A thin line burned across his shoulder told of a near-miss with an enemy’s identity disk. And that was just surface-damage, visible wounds.

Underneath, Sark’s decompiler had done plenty of harm to his circuitry. Most of the shorts in his functions and subroutines were, thankfully, ones that had already been under-used; they had overloaded first due to the unused energy already present in his system. His spatial recognition calculators were still out of whack, but that was a glitch Ram had caused himself when he’d forced too much power into his disk.

It had needed to be done to take out the force field generators that kept them captive, but it had still been a horribly suicidal manoeuvre on Ram’s part. He’d made it worse by charging headlong into battle without letting his systems rest. Sark’s electric shocks had only compounded the glitches that the stunt had caused, on top of adding their own.

An involuntary twitch ran through the unconscious program’s body – after-shocks of electrocution – a quiet groan escaping his throat.

The wild Bits, whom had scattered into hiding when the User had come onto the scene, had gradually started to re-emerge when it didn’t appear Roy was a threat. The parent Bit, who had led the welcoming party for Ram, was first and boldest to approach, hovering a little distance away as the User worked on the damaged program’s code. It was silent, gray facets shifting, as though realising interrupting the User’s work would not be welcome.

Its trio of budlings weren’t as tactful; one tiny Bit, who had been brave enough to nuzzle the energy-soaked fingers of the first visitor, floated a bit closer, bobbing just over Ram’s outstretched legs.

_[no?]_

It seemed concerned about the unconscious one’s health. It tapped itself gently against Ram’s boot, chirping a hopeful _[yes!-no-oo?]_ as though trying to wake up the fun program who had pinged at it before.

Encouraged by their sibling, the other two budlings quickly zipped down and tapped on Ram’s boot themselves, cheeping _[yes-yes-yes-yes]_ until their guardian flared a sharp, red _[NO]._ With a squealing chorus of _[no-no-no]_ s, the infant Bits swirled back to a respectful distance, hovering in neutral states yet somehow seeming thoroughly chastised.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Activating the disc with his free hand, Roy set it gently on the ground beside him. It read differently from the modern Grid-standard discs, but it wasn't hard for him to find his way around.  
  
As he eased further into the code, he kept a hand flat on Ram's chest, alert for any ebb or surge in his power levels. He glanced away from the disc now and then, his eyes flicking to the external damage the code was revealing. Some of those scars were _old_ , and his own white circuits flared in unconscious anger and sympathy. A couple of times he stopped scrolling entirely and focused on Ram's uneven power flow, grounding some of the static charge that had ramped his system up so far. The power jolted Roy the first time, snapping out of Ram's circuits and out through his hand into the dark earth, reminding him uncomfortably of touching an electric fence; but he quickly learned to sense the surges coming and manage them better.  
  
He spoke, too: reassurances, instructions, random information -- needing to assure Ram that unconscious or not, he wasn't alone.  
  
"You've been carrying those bruises for a long time, haven't you?" No time to go through Ram's recent memories, not that he _would_ have without permission -- he didn't need those to see the angry red breaks in the swirling basecode. "That's been degrading... 's okay, all gone now... oh." His mouth crooked upward despite the situation. "You're just full of surprises. I remember working on this." He hadn't compiled it in, though; his world's Tron had had plenty of bait in ENCOM's system without needing another tester.  
  
Not the Ram from his own world, then. But it didn't matter. _His_ program, regardless; only one User in the multiverse might have a stronger claim, and that User would have been here if he could.  
  
When Ram stirred and groaned, Roy looked down quickly, catching his breath; but no further movement was forthcoming, and he sighed and ran a gentle hand through the hair behind his ear.  
  
 _You're okay. It's all right. It's over now._  
  
The next time he looked up, they'd been surrounded by Bits.  
  
He was almost done with the bulk of his work by that time, and just smiled a little worriedly and went back to drawing the last parameters into place. "Yeah," he murmured, a quiet, distracted response to the little guys' questions. "This is my program. You're worried about him, huh? Me too. But it's okay. He's gonna be fine."  
  
He scrolled out, looking at the disc data with a critical eye. Some of the damage was only isolated for later repair; the important things now were to stop ongoing degradation, boost Ram's self-repair functions to handle the too-numerous shorts, get rid of as many physical wounds as he could catch on the fly like this, and stabilize the glitches in his circulation.  
  
Finally satisfied, he hitched Ram further up on his lap and saved his changes with the overwrite instructions that would sync Ram with the disc rather than the other way around. Ram's injured hand caught his eye, and he bit his lip hard enough to leave a mark. Well. _That_ wasn't going to trouble Ram for more than another few minutes.  
  
"Here comes something," he murmured, old Gibbs's favorite joke coming to mind as he lifted Ram's shoulders and slid the disc back where it belonged.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s circuit array flickered, dimming as power diverted to synchronisation as Roy locked the disk in place. The concentric rings lit up, one by one, radiating outward until the outer edge blazed a healthy blue. For a moment, nothing further happened – even the Bits moved closer in tense anticipation.

Then, gradually, power returned to illuminate the lights fully, spreading outward from Ram’s disk dock. Where it found damaged circuitry, it soothed – mending cracks and bruises as the repair commands flowed, turning damage-red into healing turquoise.

It couldn’t fix it all – there were glitches and inconsistencies in Ram’s code, origins unknown. The gouging on his palm only knitted up on the surface, still a dull, painful-looking scar. The major damage on his armour healed enough to become superficial cosmetic scratches, like the paint scraped off a car door, but there were still small patches of cracked, dark circuitry where power had been cut off and couldn’t return.

The repairs boosted Ram’s own internal mending functions, bridging gaps and restoring power to most of the shorted circuitry. It swirled in confusion around his memory banks, probing deeper than was necessary. Something was wrong here; the file tables were far too jumbled to sort out, so it left them alone and moved onward. Likewise, there was still fluid trapped in his air processors. That had to go.

The brush of the repair subroutines against his memory banks made Ram suddenly tense up, his lips contorting back in a grimace as glitched files flashed through his logic circuits. Images of –

_// Sark’s sneering face, a hand gripping his chin as the command program inspected Ram’s listless gaze, only to scoff in disgust and shove the unresponsive program back –_

_// Binary, unintelligible, something about Tron – wait, Tron, what about Tron, what were they saying, he couldn’t comprehend, something was wrong with his auditory functions –_

_// The flick-flash of lights passing by, being dragged down unfamiliar corridors – why couldn’t he move, why couldn’t he respond –_

Ram snapped out of standby with a sudden jolt, sucked in a wet-sounding gasp as his eyes flew open, unseeing. He automatically rolled away as the repair functions reversed his air processors, expelling the last of the inhaled energy in unpleasant coughs.

The sudden movement and loud sound frightened the Bits; they sped away, flaring _[No]_ s in bursts of excited titters.

~ _Delete it,_ ~ Ram groaned in binary, pressing his forehead against the damp ground as he redirected the invasive repair code away from his air intakes, breathing slowly to avoid triggering a repeat performance. He was never going swimming in energy again, _ever_. Scratch that idea off his bucket list, to use a User-idiom.

_Wait_. He rewound his chronometers for the past few nanocycles and his brow furrowed at the temporal inconsistencies it threw back at him. He'd been asleep a lot longer than he'd thought. _And wasn’t I worse off than this?_ Lying in a puddle of energy pooled from his soaked armour might’ve explained his power levels, but what had kick-started his repair functions into overdrive?

He went very, very still, as his spatial sensors (still _glitched_ , Users crash it – why hadn’t he listened to Tron?) registered he was not alone.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The repairs weren't taking hold as well as Roy would have liked. Possibly that the damage was too cumulative to simply be wiped away -- possibly Ram's glitched energy processing was to blame. Maybe there was some kind of read/write error going on.... but it was enough, anyway, enough for now; they could sort it all out later.  
  
Roy was pretty sure by now that Ram hadn't sustained most of those injuries in any crash, either. They were too deep, too systematic.  
  
His program had been tortured.  
  
His arms tightened around Ram as if to fend off the whole world, another sharp surge of anger making him close his eyes for a moment. Then Ram convulsed, and Roy caught him before he could fully roll away, supporting his head as the last of the fluid was expelled.  
  
He stayed there as Ram slumped toward the ground, heat rolling off the blue circuits as they stabilized again, one of Roy's arms still around Ram's shoulders as the program slowly became more aware of his surroundings.  
  
"Ram," he breathed. "Ram? It's okay. You're safe now."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

His first instinct was to go for his disk for defense – and how he _hated_ that it had been trained into him to go for weaponry first and ask questions _after_ being suitably armed. He didn’t used to be so wary. But the warm weight of the other program’s arm was resting across his shoulders, blocking his reach, so he remained still.

From his position slumped on the ground, he could barely make out the edge of a circuit-line running over dark fabric. He squinted slightly. _White circuits? White was neutral, wasn’t it?_ He couldn’t be sure; his memories still felt like they’d been stuck in a recursive loop generator. He’d certainly never met a program with white circuits. But white wasn’t MCP-red. White therefore was good…he hoped.

The strange program was murmuring reassurances too, which was a good sign. Ram rather liked the voice. It was soothing, friendly…except he must’ve had a glitch in his aural subroutines that the repair code had missed, because that sounded like his own voice telling him he was safe now.

Groaning with the effort, he propped himself up on an elbow, used the other hand to stick a finger in his ear and clean out any remaining energy that might’ve been fritzing his receivers. Then he turned his head to look at his companion – and jerked back violently in surprise. Given that he was half-laying in the other’s lap, this sent Ram sprawling on the energy-slicked ground. Given that his helmet was laying somewhere else, he supposed it was just good fortune that he didn’t crack his head harder when his back hit the floor.

~ _Glitch it for gridbugs_ ,~ he swore, rubbing the back of his head and sitting back up on his elbows. _/scaredme-unexpected._ He certainly hadn’t been prepared to find his own face staring at him in worry. Still, it wasn’t the first time he’d met other programs written by R_Kleinberg7.

The dark-clad template and circuit array were new, though. Probably a search program, designed for stealth. He smiled brightly, and pinged a simple _/query-programdesignation?_

It never occurred to him that the duplicate was not one of R_Kleinberg7’s, but Roy Kleinberg himself – and therefore couldn’t understand a single transmission.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Hey, easy -- easy!" Roy's first instinct was to grab Ram and pull him right back, but he managed to restrain himself; it was more than probable that he'd have had the same reaction in this sort of situation. He still leaned forward though, hands on his knees to stop himself from reaching out again, concern and hope warring in his eyes.  
  
Ram did seem back to full alertness, and his own self-repair functions, shored up as they were now, should be able to take care of that bump on the head; it hadn't been too heavy. He was still dripping with energy, though, which Roy belatedly realized hadn't been absorbed because Ram's levels were too high already; the oversaturated ground hadn't helped much with that either. It was too bad this spa didn't come with towels. They'd have to complain to the management or something... when they were both safely back in the City.  
  
The guileless smile brought an answering grin to Roy's face, but it slipped slightly at the odd buzzing sensation of the subliminal ping. He tilted his head, blinked, thumped his temple with the heel of his hand -- there it went again. It had to be Ram; the program seemed to be expecting a response, but what _was_ it? Was this Ram like Anon, unable to speak? -- Not that that would change anything except to make it a little harder to communicate. But there hadn't been anything in his code to point to that, at least on the levels Roy had dealt with.  
  
"Uh..." he said, feeling a little foolish. "Is that you? Can you say it out loud? I don't have the right function for that."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s smile dropped off in confusion the longer the other program went without responding. And then deepened into a look of baffled incredulity, when he was informed he didn’t have the functions to read pings.

~ _What about binary?_ ~ he asked, squinting at his doppelganger. The sub-vocal communication used different communications circuits to translate and understand them. They were generally separate from the subroutines used to translate pings, but faced with his twin’s further confusion, it was obvious binary wasn’t getting Ram anywhere either.

What sort of program couldn’t read pings, or understand binary for that matter? It was written into all core code, even if every program’s User had a unique style of programming. And speaking in it was a lot easier than running his voice functions.

Maybe this program was too simple-coded to have those kinds of subroutine communications. Though it would make him a lousy search program if that was the case.

Ram sighed, and switched over to vocal language packs.

“Hr=//rrS+***x00k –” he stopped mid-sentence and shut his mouth with a frown, shaking his head and knocking his temple with the flat of his hand in a manner very similar to Roy’s reaction to pings, as though it could rattle something back into place. That wasn’t right. Belaying the sudden worried look on the other program’s face by holding up a finger in a wait-one-moment gesture, he closed his eyes, accessing his language subroutines.

Internal diagnostics informed him of a short that hadn’t been patched, scrambling the translation matrices.

~ _Frag and crash it, I am going to ram Sark’s helmet so far up his subroutines –_ ~ he growled, directing repair systems to bypass the damaged pathways and reconnect.

Tentatively, he spoke, slowly, ready to force-quit if the repairs didn’t hold. It took a second for the words to form properly, but when they did, he grinned, quite sheepishly. “**#Rrr-shhis this better?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy shook his head apologetically at the follow-up ping; binary he _recognized_ , at least, but it went by too fast for him to translate. Could a User even acquire those subroutines? The question hadn't really come up on the Grid (well, the Grids); even the data-pushers there usually had full vocal options, whether or not they preferred to use them.   
  
Sitting back on his heels, he watched the visible internal struggle with bated breath. The fragged-modem sound was _not_ the first thing he'd expected to come out of Ram's mouth, but he swallowed his reaction and nodded at the gesture to wait.  
  
When the noises finally resolved into recognizable words, he grinned back in glad relief (and not a little pride in his stubborn, tenacious program). "Yeah -- that's good. Sorry about that."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Oh, well, that’s a rel- _ktch_ -ief.” Ram twitched slightly as his voice gave an electronic skip-hiccup mid-sentence, and rubbed his throat. ~ _Glitch it_.~ “I hope that stops, or else it’s gonna get re- _ktch_ -eally annoying.” He raked his damp hair back from his forehead with a hand and let out a shaky breath, sitting up with a grimace as his motor functions protested. Repairs or not, there were some aches that just _lingered_.

The actuary was trembling minutely by the time he was properly sitting up, partly from fatigue and partly from high power levels. He rested his forehead against a bent knee for a moment. But now that he’d solved the communications problems, a combination of sheer relief and delayed rescue-shock meant he just couldn’t _stop talking_.

“I don’t know how you got me out of there but you have no id- _ktch_ -dea how relieved I am you did,” he babbled, grinning as he pressed the heel of his palm against an eye. “I think I might’ve overd- _ktch_ -done it with Sark a bit, telling him to go interface a lightcycle baton. Either that or it was the- _ktch_ \- the limerick about his helmet. Yeah, no, probably the limerick – _glitch_ , his face, I’ll never forget it.”

He giggled, a bit feverishly. “Probably not my best plan, but to be fair, I was kinda glitched in the head. Comes with electroshock, y’know. Fragging de- _ktch_ -decompiler.” He sucked in a breath, oblivious to the reaction this ramble was garnering from his companion.

“Course I probably didn’t do myself any favours with the lightdisk stunt and the g- _ktch_ -generators, but it was either that or give up hope in my User and I don’t even think it c- _ktch_ -crossed my mind to do that – had enough of turquoise circuits cycles ago – and then Sark gets us arrested and tries to get me to talk and then I’m waking up _submerged in energy_ , User knows how, and _you_ show up and all I can s- _ktch_ -say is it’s _about crashing time_ R_Kleinberg7 sent rescue.”


	3. Chapter 3

Programs with _hiccups_.  
  
Seriously.  
  
Roy sagged back for a moment, fighting a smile, the combination of relief and adrenaline wearing off making him feel just as shaky and reminding him that he _had_ just walked away from a forced landing. "Don't worry about it," he managed, with a weak chuckle. "It'll probably wear off in a minute or two."  
  
The energy trying and failing to absorb into Ram's system probably wasn't doing him any good. Roy had rezzed back in wearing a short cloak around his shoulders; he detached it with a thought and handed it over. It wasn't as absorbent as the real thing, but could at least wick away some of the liquid.   
  
Ram was talking now -- a nervous reaction that couldn't be stemmed. Some of it sounded familiar, some didn't; Roy couldn't get a word in edgewise, though he cracked up at the part about Sark (now there was a name he remembered) and scooted forward to within arm's reach of the program, breaking a little inside at the brutal knowledge of what had caused all those shorts. Long over the mixture of brashness and hesitance he'd lived with before meeting Flynn, he wrapped an arm around Ram's back, steady and comforting.   
  
The part about the generators didn't sound familiar, and he was mulling that over when the next couple of words hit, the rush of pride and gratitude chased by a confused pang of realization.  
  
 _He doesn't know_.  
  
Roy could deal with that. He was used to being recognized by his programs, but Ram had been through more than enough to get a pass on not realizing he was sitting next to a User. It'd been completely out of the realm of possibility back then, he'd been told; before Flynn, Users had been lights and voices from the sky, and it wasn't unusual to see another program wearing your face. It'd make it kind of awkward to introduce himself, though. _Hi, um, actually I wrote you?_ There'd be plenty of time for that later.  
  
"Wasn't me that got you out," he admitted. "It's a long story. But I'm sorry I couldn't get to you sooner."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram accepted the offered cloak with a weak smile and tried his best to wipe off most of the energy still clinging to his armour. Some of it had pooled underneath in crevices he couldn’t reach; ah well, he’d just have to get those later when he could deactivate the clasps that held the gladiator template together. With the worst of the mess cleaned off, the constant high he had been giddily riding since his dip in the pool slowly began to level out and drop to more manageable levels.

And with it went the manic energy, as the exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical damage or fluctuating power levels made itself known.

Ram listed slightly as the other program slid an arm around his shoulders, leaning into the doppelganger’s chest and closing his eyes as he rambled on about the generators. The duplicate’s presence was almost like energy itself, although not as abrupt and obvious. It felt warm and welcoming, like a missing piece of his code had downloaded into place. It felt good, and Ram almost missed the other’s response when the actuary finally reached the end of his babble.

He opened his eyes, canting his head in slight confusion. It hadn’t been his new friend who’d rescued him? Well, no, that made a little sense. After all, if he’d been rescued by this program, he probably wouldn’t have woken up in an energy spring. He said as much to his companion, with a smirk, but the smile fell off his face as he looked around. The niggling sense of the unfamiliar was making him uneasy.

“Though if you didn’t resc- _ktch_ -ue me, I gotta wonder how I got here. Wherever ‘h- _ktch_ -here’ is…” He licked his lips, the tang of raw energy still lingering. “Kinda an out-of-the-way spot...pretty though. Don’t remember anyp- _ktch_ -place like this in the Encom system outlands; _pff,_ course not, stupid MCP, power-hogging overc- _ktch_ -compensating calculator – ‘S darker than Encom too. Real off the map – hey, how’d you find me, anyways?”

The change from rambling to the sudden question came with a sharp turn of Ram’s head to peer curiously at his companion, which quickly became a cross-eyed look as Ram’s visual perception spun uncomfortably from the quick motion. He shut his eyes with a groan and rested his head against his companion’s shoulder. “Ugh.” _/dizzy-donotwant._

Then, attention span clearly not all that steady, he paused, and his circuitry dimmed with embarrassment. “Geez, Ram, bits for brains,” he scolded himself in a mutter. “M’st’ve sc- _ktch_ -scrambled my manners subroutines too, not asking someone’s name right off.” Well, he had, but not in an understandable language, and then it had just…slipped his mind to repeat himself properly.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Like I said, long story," said Roy, a smile tugging at his mouth. He'd slung the dry side of the cloak back around Ram's shoulders, the dampness welcome as it seeped through his sleeve. "This happens a lot around here, though. We should get out of here -- there's probably not a lot of gridbugs this close to the springs, but it'll be safer back in the City."  
  
Safer from gridbugs, anyway.  
  
The question gave him pause. _Had_ there been something? He'd been fighting with the light-jet, but had he wheeled it toward the springs before they'd been visible over the towering cliffs that surrounded them, some indefinable instinct telling him this was the place to be? It was all a blur now.  
  
A flicker of blue-grey at the edge of his vision -- the curious Bits were back, circling them cautiously. The little things scattered, though, with a flurry of _[no]_ s, as Ram leaned dizzily against Roy's shoulder, and all thoughts of formulating a straight answer went with them. Roy leaned forward to take his full weight, his other hand smoothing down Ram's hair, unable to translate the ping directly but having no trouble putting it in context. "Hey... shh. Take your time."  
  
A line from an old song came to mind and he had to smile at it. _He ain't heavy. He's my program._ And it was true. Shaky as he was, he'd carry Ram back to the city himself if it came to that (though hopefully it wouldn't).  
  
He nodded at the question; it had to come sooner or later. "I'll tell you, but you've gotta promise not to panic, okay? It's more important to get you out of here."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Gridbugs?” The word brought Ram at least somewhat out of his dizzy, dazed confusion. He tensed, looking around as though the corruption-scavengers were already materialising somewhere nearby. “Gridbugs are bad. No, yes – you’re r- _ktch_ -right; we should get out of here.” He struggled to rise, staggering heavily against his still-unnamed companion as his spatial recognition sensors sluggishly tried to function around the glitches that were throwing off his balance.

Then the rest of what the doppelganger had said filtered through the muddled haze, and he blinked at his twin, suddenly feeling wary. “…Why would I p- _ktch_ -panic? You’re not secretly one of the MCP’s goons, are you?” It was said jokingly, but a tiny spark of fear still flashed in Ram’s eyes.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Wait, wait--" Holding on tight, supporting the teetering program even as he tried to tug him back down, Roy inwardly cursed his own forgetfulness. Helping Ram had driven the rest of the situation right out of his mind. "Don't move yet. I've got to get some of that energy to fix my lightjet. It'll only take a minute."  
  
His eyes widened at the half-serious joke, and he shook his head, looking up earnestly. "No, it's just -- _no_. I promise I've got nothing to do with the MCP. You won't have to worry about him any more." He swallowed and pulled in a breath, wishing with all his heart that he could somehow have spared Ram all this.  
  
"My name's Roy Kleinberg.... I'm a User."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram blinked, and laughed faintly, staring at Roy with an incredulous smirk. “A User? Come on, you’re just teasing now.” His voice wavered at the serious look in Roy’s gaze, and the smile faded slowly into a wide-eyed stare. “…Oh. Oh glitch, that’s – You’re not teasing. Oh. Oh geez. Oh _Users_ –”

Perhaps fortunately for both of them, he had stopped trying to get up. It meant he didn’t fall as far when his legs gave out in shock, and he sat back down quite heavily, dazed.

“I’m not here at all, am I? I’m derezzed and this is all some data-ghost hallucination.” He covered his mouth with a hand, trembling. “Either that or I am way, way too overcharged.” A hysterical giggle leaked its way out from behind his palm. “Except it would explain so much if this isn’t one insanely detailed dream and I don’t think it is a hallucination and that means – oh geez.” He stared at Roy, a bit wild-eyed. Roy. Kleinberg. _R_Kleinberg7_.

An error warning flickered at the edge of his vision, warning him of impending vapour-lock; he’d stopped cycling air through his cooling systems, and the sheer impossibility before him was overheating his logic circuits. He sucked in a ragged breath before his processors could force a shut-down; the fresh air cleared some of the heat-haze, but left him incredibly dizzy. He swayed where he sat, pressing a hand to his head, and leaning heavily on a hand.

“I thought you were a _search program_ ,” he muttered with equal parts shock and disbelief. “How did I miss – the warmth, just like the I/O towers – Oh geez, I told you about the generators. I told you about the _decompiler_.” He refused to meet Roy’s eyes, not eager to witness what he might see there. He had _sat there_ and rambled about _torture_ and _suicidal, impulsive stunts_ – albeit, not very coherently, but in front of his _User!_ –

Something else was dawning on him that added horror to the collection of emotion on his face.

Now he fully comprehended just who he had been drunkenly rambling to for the past nano-hex. He moaned and hid his face in his hand.

“ _Glitches and gridbugs_ , I made an _interfacing joke_ in front of a _User_. I told you about the _limerick_. Oh _frag_.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy shook his head, smiling shakily as Ram slowly worked around to the idea that this might really be happening. The shoulder-cloak had slipped off; he let it be, pulling the confused program into a half-hug, careful of the circuits on his shoulder -- he'd learned to manage his output the way programs did, but old-system circuits went _everywhere_.  
  
"Ram -- _breathe_ ," he urged, his eyes stinging. Dust in the air? Nah. Even with all the versions he'd met, Ram still humbled and awed him. He leaned his head against the damp curls. "It's okay, it's okay, I'm just glad you're here...."  
  
Ram's last mortified complaint left him speechless for a moment; then he let out a choked laugh. " _Ram_ \--" Catching Ram's hand, he drew it gently away from his face and held it tightly, nudging the program's chin upward. "You never have to be ashamed to tell me anything, got it? I mean that. And if that helmet was anything like the way I heard it was, it deserved a couple of limericks."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram was shaking slightly in the User’s grasp as Roy gently forced him to stop hiding and look him in the eyes – eyes that were so like Ram’s own, even with differences in colour and brightness, and yet held a depth of life and warmth that made them twinkle with Roy’s amusement. Ram caught the User’s infectious mood and choked out a watery-sounding laugh himself.

“Pretty much boiled down to insinuating he had his head up the MCP’s ass,” he confirmed, his giggle carrying a fragile edge to it that he tried to smooth over. “Sark really laid into me for it. I should’ve said it in binary; it sounded much better. Tron kept telling me it –” He froze.

Tron. Tron, _Tron_ , **_Tron_**.

As fast as he had absorbed it before, energy now seemed to drain from Ram’s face, circuitry flickering briefly before flaring brightly as he looked wildly around the surrounding terrain. If he had wound up in this place, wherever it was, had the same thing happened to his friend? Ram had no idea what had become of Tron after the uprising in the compound, but from what Sark had insinuated, Tron might be in worse shape than Ram, and without the benefit of an energy-bath.

Ram tore away from Roy, scrambling unsteadily to his feet, suddenly frantic as he searched the landscape with his eyes for any sign of circuitry. “Frag it, how could I have forgotten –” ~ _Tron!~ /location-confirm-status, ~ **Tron**!~_

No response pinged back; not even an echo. All the wide-broadcast ping-binary did was stir the wild Bits into a titter, startled by the intrusion of sensation and noise.

Distressed, the program whirled back to Roy, catching the User’s sleeve in a white-knuckled grip. “Did you find anyone else when you arrived? There was a security program, Tron – I don’t know if you know Alan-One, that’s his User’s name – but never mind that, he was arrested – they got us both when the uprising failed, Sark had him first, he might’ve come ahead of me – TRON!” The last word was yelled in desperation, hands cupped around his mouth. The sound echoed mournfully off the rocks in the silence of the outlands.

 _/confirm- **please**_ , he pinged, covering his mouth to stifle a hitching rattle from his air processors. Still no answer. The possibilities for _why_ were too much for Ram to process. He shut down his actuarial functions immediately; he didn’t want to know the odds.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy shot right to his feet after Ram, ready to catch him again if he staggered. The sudden panic was completely unexpected, but Tron's name, coming before the series of sharp, terrified pings, put everything in context.  
  
Caught up in the emotion, Roy couldn't help whirling to look around too, his heart sinking as none of the pings rang unfamiliar. The terraced energy pools were breathtaking, Bits dancing around the edges of some of the further ones, liquid still rippling in the one he'd pulled Ram out of and spilling over into unknowable emptiness; but the Outlands rose dark and perilous around them and their vision was blocked in too many directions.  
  
He was already shaking his head when Ram turned back to him, a hand on the distraught program's shoulder pleading for patience. "It was just you. We usually only get people one at a time here; Alan didn't come with me either, I had to go back for him. I'm going to run a search pattern--" He was already opening it, a series of glowing, interlocking perimeters tracing themselves between his hands, the new light glinting between them as risked a quick look back up. Months of travel between two Grids, and the collaborative raid and rebuilding effort that had freed the one in his own world, had left him with the knowledge and experience needed to face Ram with utter confidence. "It'll tell us if there's anyone else around here. Listen, if Tron's _not_ here, it's most likely that he's back where you came from. I know that's bad, but he's tough. And we're gonna get him out."  
  
Finishing the pattern, he studied it and bit his lip. A script like this would easily cover a sector in the City, grounded and with power to spare, but out here... wait. He swiped one last line away from it: an unfinished vector leading straight to the nearby spring. The line propagated itself, running away from them, skimming above the flickering surface, and finally gliding in.  
  
A sharp point of brightness raced back along the line. Roy's search pattern lit up, a ghost of it expanding outward at ferocious speed, the arcs passing straight through program and User with no effect. It covered the springs and went on, the interlacing terraces suddenly growing in the small central map as a series of faint green lines, tall ridges and broken terrain shooting up around it, two tiny bright dots occupying the center -- the only non-Bit life within range.  
  
At least there weren't any gridbugs.  
  
"Okay...." He heaved out a frustrated sigh and smiled crookedly, closing the search pattern between his palms. "Okay. Plan B, which is really Plan A, but who's keeping track?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As agitated as he felt, Ram couldn’t help but gasp as Roy touched the very air and formed the search parameters, an intricate web of light and code brought to life at the User’s fingertips. The actuary stumbled back a step, legs bumping into a nearby rock, and sank onto it as he watched, wide-eyed and enthralled.

If ever he had a doubt about Roy’s identity, it was erased by the display of otherworldly power Roy wielded. No program could rez something so complex out of nothing. Not even the MCP.

The program watched in anxious silence as the User finished coding and sent a line of code directly into the energy springs. He stiffened as a pulse of ghostly light expanded outward, but though it passed through him he felt nothing but the faintest tingle as the search pattern recorded his presence.

An odd warring of despair and relief clashed in Ram’s processors as the map filled out, tracing the terrain in miniature, and only two registered life-signs blinking in the centre – one blue, one white. Ram slumped, shaking as he buried his face in his hands and tried to get a handle on the processes running through his logic circuits. He wasn’t here. Tron wasn’t here. But if he wasn’t here, he was still back _there_.

“Can you –” Ram swallowed, his voice hoarse and tight. “Can you activate whatever it was that brought me here, and get him here too? I don’t – he was – when they arrested us, they used function-binders – he was _afraid_ , I’ve never seen him afr –” he choked briefly, locked on the memory of Tron’s fearful expression, Ram screaming Tron’s name as they were separated, desperate and helpless. “We can’t leave him in Sark’s hands. _Please_ , Roy.” The User’s name slipped out before he could stop it, unfamiliar and pleading on his tongue.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The search pattern gone, Roy felt his throat knotting as he stumbled over to Ram, hesitated with his hand brushing the bowed, trembling head, and then pulled him close, scrubbing his free hand over his own face. "I'm not in control of that, Ram," he said, his voice cracked and weary. "I really wish I could. We can get there and break him out, but the Portal's hours away and we can't go in blind."  
  
Tron in Sark's hands, Tron _afraid_ , Ram's heart cracking at the memory... there probably wasn't a _good_ time for an old-system program to find out his User wasn't omnipotent, but as bad times went, it really could have been better.  
  
"We have to get back to the City before we can do anything -- this isn't my system; I can't just control it. I'll explain everything on the way, but the best way you can help Tron right now is to let me take you home."  
  
Home -- to a war-torn city and the news that awaited him there. The distracted Portal programs had only known that the disaster had been _huge_. If Flynn or Alan had been caught in the blasts, or the younger Clu, or Yori, Anon, any of the Rams.....  
  
He swayed a little, but stubbornly stayed on his feet, his arm solid around Ram's shoulders. It wasn't his system and he couldn't do everything -- Lord knew there couldn't always be a happy ending; sometimes the books just didn't balance out. But he could still save _this_ one. For this one, he could be strong.


	4. Chapter 4

Ram pressed his forehead into the slope of Roy’s shoulder as the User pulled him in, keening softly as he fisted his hands against the curve of his programmer’s back and fought his over-taxed emotions back from the brink of a processor meltdown. Roy’s presence helped – it wasn’t Tron, with his quiet strength and comforting pings in the darkness of the compound barracks, but the warmth and safety he could feel – now that he was aware of it, he could separate it from the general buzz from high energy levels – was enough to keep the torrent at bay.

The User’s words also helped – logical, rational explanations that soothed over the recursive loops and glitches in his risk analysis subroutines, the ones that kept him alive in the games by staying five steps ahead of everyone else. Panic had scrambled his thoughts up with hanging _[if]_ statements, no _[than]_ s to close them and keep them orderly. He closed them off with temporary patches and shuffled them to the side.

Ram took a deep breath and let it out in a mostly-steady exhale, squeezing his arms briefly tighter around Roy’s torso as the User swayed, before he loosened his grip and pulled back. He still felt shaky, but his mind was clearer.

“Okay – you’re right, if you say we should head for the…the City, we…that’s probably best – what can I do to help? You said something about a…a lightjet?” He looked up at Roy, puzzled and a little worried; the User looked almost as unsteady as Ram felt.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As long as no gridbugs showed up, Roy could have stood there forever, bowed over Ram and holding him tightly, with the baby Bits circling them warily, the bravest one cautiously floating in to cuddle quietly against Ram's neck.  
  
He couldn't move, anyway, until Ram had pulled himself together. The program's whole world had been turned upside down, on top of what had probably been months of torture and fighting for his life. Traumas like that didn't go away overnight, no matter how quickly the physical wounds could be healed.   
  
"You're helping already," he murmured back, leaning into the tighter hold until Ram was ready to let go. "And -- stick with me, okay? I'll give you the big picture and then we can get into what to do from there."   
  
Reluctant to lose touch, he tugged gently on Ram's arm before shuffling over to the edge of the nearest pool. He had an idea for how to get all the energy they'd need back to the lightjet, but first he had to do something about the exhaustion and shakiness that was starting to set in. He waved around at the dark stones, illuminated by the pools' shimmering light and backlit by the faint glow of the Grid coloring the clouds beyond them.  
  
"Okay. So first of all, this place we're in is the Outlands. It's... pretty big and most lightcycles don't work here." Flopping down by the shoreline, he dipped his hand into the pool, foregoing tests and quantifications for the simple sensation of renewal that tingled up his arm. "So I just rezzed in and was coming back from the Portal, and I took a jet since it was faster than the Solar Sailer, but the jet got damaged coming out of the Sailer corridor so I have to fix the wing before we can go up again. After that it'll just be... oh, twenty minutes to my usual sector."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Stick with Roy. He could do that. The actuary rose to his feet, moving with the User’s tug on his arm, and swayed unsteadily for the first few steps before his glitched balancers could compensate. The motion caused something to bump against his throat; Ram looked down curiously to find one of the budling bits spinning midair in neutral form, dazed from the impact. It noticed his attention and cheeped a high-pitched _[yes],_ floating up in front of his face.

“Hello again,” he greeted it, as he followed Roy towards the pool’s edge. The Bit and its siblings followed, chirping happily now that Ram seemed alright.

A convenient stone provided good assistance as he used it for balance, settling cross-legged next to his User by the shore and resting his chin on his hand thoughtfully. Roy was explaining how he had arrived; there were a few terms Ram couldn’t quite follow, but he got the gist of most of it.

Roy, though, was apparently trying to recharge through absorption. It would work, but it was horribly inefficient.

“D’you want my disk?” Ram blurted out, interrupting the User mid-sentence, somewhere between Solar Sailer corridors and travel times. “I mean, um, for – to use–” He detached his disk from his back and made a small scooping motion with it before holding it out to Roy. “It’d be more efficient then osmosis. Or you could use y– oh, maybe not.” He’d noticed Roy’s hollow-centred disk, and something occurred to him. Was raw energy safe for Users to drink? Maybe osmosis was normal for Users; he quickly backtracked with a stammered, “unless that’s how Users process energy anyways, I didn’t mean to suggest–” _/sorry-endingvocalfunctions_. He shut his mouth with a sheepish click.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy had actually forgotten the energy he'd scooped up, and let some of it dribble through his fingers as he looked down in surprise. "For the -- oh wow, I'm really spaced out.... Yeah, I was gonna drink it, I just--" He chuckled sheepishly, spilled it back into the pool and took the disc automatically as Ram held it out, only then struck by the fact that he wasn't handling it out of necessity as it had been before. Ram was willingly handing over his disc, his best defense and the sum of his identity, without a caution or a qualm, for a reason as simple as this.  
  
He looked from it to Ram with a spark of awe and thankfulness.  
  
"That's... thanks. It's really okay? I mean, the discs were designed differently over here so I never thought of...."  
  
...Flynn. Flynn had done it before disappearing, on ENCOM company picnics broken up by inevitable Tron-style frisbee wars and programmers pushing each other into lakes. Lora had scolded him because who knew what the disc had landed in over the course of the day, and he'd laughed and drawled that it was fine, man, and then handed the disc to Roy accompanied by one of those smirks with shadows behind it that the young programmer could never really figure out....  
  
Funny how neatly things could fall into place.  
  
He smiled warmly up at Ram, and dipped the disc into the light. "This... this is actually pretty cool."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy’s sudden awe at the forwardness of the gesture made Ram rub his neck with embarrassment, circuits dimming pinkish around the edges. He hadn’t really thought about it when he’d made the offer – a program’s identity, their very life, relied on their disk, and if Roy had been another Basic, Ram probably never would’ve thought about it. But Roy…Roy was R_Kleinberg7, and if Ram believed Roy could betray him, he deserved derezzing right there and then.

“Yeah, it’s okay.” Ram’s circuit array brightened and the program grinned, looking more like his usual self. “The idea actually just came to me. Pool, disk, better intake efficiency –” he spread his hands in a _‘there-you-have-it’_ gesture, shrugging. “Gotta remember it for la- _ktch_ -later.”

The electronic hiccup was the first he’d had since Roy had confessed his identity, and it made Ram pause and scowl. ~ _Gridbugs_.~ His head hurt again. He leaned on an elbow and surreptitiously rubbed his temple with his free hand – which dropped quickly back to his lap when Roy turned his attention away from collecting energy.

“So, Solar Sailers, huh?” He couldn’t help the small note of aversion out of his voice, as he steered the conversation back to what Roy had been saying prior to interruption.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Clever!" Roy grinned back approvingly. "I dunno why Flynn made the new discs the other way. You could use this for lots of things."  
  
A couple of mouthfuls left him feeling less hollow, and he shook the excess off the disc, giving it a quick wipe with his sleeve before handing it back. Ram needed rest, time to process the energy he'd already taken in; more of it wouldn't help.  
  
He nodded at the question, curious about the unenthusiastic tone. "Yeah, but like I said, too slow. We'll probably still get there before it does."  
  
He could have fashioned a container for the extra energy the jet would need, but somewhere in the welter of looking after Ram he'd had a better idea. Sketching a cubical wireframe in the air just above the liquid, he set the interior to a low negative potential and eased it down toward the glowing liquid. A compressed stream of power was instantly sucked in, packing in more than a container could have.  
  
The returning vocal glitch made him look up while the feed was still going. Ram didn't look so good, for all he was trying not to show it. Roy was pretty sure there were no major problems left in his code, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to keep an eye out for more symptoms.  
  
The little glowing cube finished packing, and he sealed it off and looked back up at Ram. "I should tell you up front, this world's not perfect. There's still some trouble going on. But we've got a lot of good people here, and some things can happen here that I used to think were completely impossible." _Like you_.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram accepted the clean disk with a grin and, feeling showy, walked the deactivated edge through his fingers before returning it to dock. The familiar, flashy motion was oddly soothing – or maybe it was just relief that his dexterity hadn’t been one of the things to fry. He watched in wonder as Roy formed…well, something. Whatever it was, it was glitching impressive, and by the time it finished sucking up energy Ram’s headache had dissipated.

“Like waking up in a User’s lap half-drowned in energy?” The actuary suggested as example to the impossible that could happen here, his tone wry and thankfully hiccup-free. “Not my finest moment.” He coughed lightly, then leaned over to the edge of the pool and scooped a small handful of energy to sip, dropping the excess back into the whole and shaking his hand dry. He didn’t need the small buzz that tingled through his systems from that sip, but he had been talking for a while now, and his vocal processors needed the lubrication.

“No system’s perfect,” Ram added as he struggled to his feet (only swaying a little once he’d gotten there – his spatial calculators were definitely almost recalibrated) and offered a hand to Roy to help pull the User up. “Anyone with half a bit’s brain knows that. Otherwise programs like the MCP wouldn’t exist.”

One of the Bits that kept hovering around Ram’s shoulders gave an indignant _[no!]_ The actuary chuckled and poked it with a finger, making it spin end-over-end. “No offense intended little one.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy stared delightedly at the complex motion. He'd never gotten the hang of turning a disc the way Flynn had, but then, his life had never hung on the skill. He had a feeling that if it had, he would have learned a lot faster.  
  
"Oh, _wait'll_ I tell you," he laughed, wrapping an arm around Ram's back again for another quick hug after the liquid had gone down. He took the offered hand readily, rising without much effort now that he'd reenergized a little; the little glowing cube of compressed energy nestled in his other hand as he indicated the way they'd go to find the light-jet again. "Programs and Users can mingle freely now. And we've got a sort of nonlinear time-travel, and apparently there's potentially millions of alternate versions of everybody, depending on what happens in our lives. This Grid is decades beyond me; it pulled me in too -- otherwise it might've been years before we found out how to get in."  
  
Too many years to comfortably think about. He shook that off and chuckled at Ram's spinning Bit. "But the MCP's gone now. I'll tell you the story on the way.... Those little guys are cute -- I hope they'll be okay out here."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Wow,” Ram exclaimed softly, awestruck as Roy outlined the Free Grid’s capabilities. There wasn’t much else he _could_ say; the whole thing was like something out of downtime tales. The program scuffed his boots on the ground as he started to follow the User back towards the lightjet – which, despite his lack of enthusiasm for the idea of having to _fly_ , sounded like something worth seeing.

“Don’t worry about them, they’ll be okay. They were here first after all; we’re just visitors. The older ones are pretty good guardians to the bitty bunch.” He grinned, but paused and frowned, puzzled, as the trio of budling Bits floated after him instead of returning to their cluster. “Hey, wha’d’you think you’re doing, hm? You can’t come with us. Go back to your family.” He waved a hand at them.

Instead of being chased off, they chattered in random patterns of _[yes]_ es and buzzed around his hand. Ram pulled it back to his chest and frowned at them. It was a fair bet they were only attracted to him because of his energy levels, and because he was probably the first program the little ones had ever seen.

 _/[NO],_ he told them plainly. _/gohome_. Sometimes they just needed it in simpler terms.

The infant Bits whined, flaring red in protest. Ram pointed his finger sternly back towards the energy spring.

Reluctantly, they each muttered one last sullen _[no]_ and flitted back towards the crystal gardens, where their guardian parent herded them up.

Ram dropped his outstretched hand and rubbed his temple with the other. He smiled in mild embarrassment at Roy. “ _Well_ then, shall we go?” Eager to get out of there and find a way to help Tron, he started striding off in what he hoped was the direction of the lightjet. Though he couldn’t help but feel like he was missing _something_ …

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy couldn't help but chuckle, entranced by the antics and the stern line Ram had to take with the tiny things. "Look at that, they like you!" he grinned. "Think they'd remember you if we came back here?"  
  
It was a beautiful place, really, despite the darkness of the surrounding cliffs. The data-growths and exuberant Bits gave it an organic, ever-changing feel, constantly shifting in the flickering light of the pools; the spilled energy had already soaked into the stones, and the hard ground admitted no trace of their passage. If Ram's abrupt entrance hadn't put him off power springs for life, it would be a nice place to come back to once in a while.  
  
Looking around, with Alan's oft-repeated directive to leave your campsite cleaner than you found it (some of those company retreats _had_ been good for something), he raised his brows behind his glasses at the one anomaly along the pristine edge of the pool.  
  
"Hey, Ram!" he called. "Just one more thing. We should probably take your helmet, right?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram, who had managed to get a few steps away, stopped dead in his tracks, his back to Roy. His shoulders went up to his ears in a wincing shrug, and his hand flew up to his head, where fingers encountered damp curls instead of the smooth dome of circuitry. The program spun on his heels, a peculiar, furtive look on his face as he focused on the helmet. He then flicked his gaze to Roy, and back to the helmet, several times.

He debated the User’s tolerance for leaving the dratted thing behind, but came to the conclusion that no, he wouldn’t be able to. And in any case, if he showed up sans-helmet back in his own system later, he’d catch it from Tron for sure. Even so, the actuary cringed and gave Roy a perfect kicked-puppy look.

“Do I hafta?” he wheedled, swaying where he stood. But, after a moment, he sighed, stomped past the User, and grabbed the offending thing off the ground.

He went to put it on, only to stop as he looked at its interior, and proceeded to pour out a measure of energy from the helmet with an irritated scowl.

Now empty, he jammed the thing on his head, twitching as the circuitry reconnected with his systems and lit up, and crossed his arms, skulking back to Roy’s side.

“Worse than Tron, for Users sake,” he muttered, only some of his words understandable. ~ _I hate this glitching thing._ ~

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Hey, I didn't say you had to put it _on_." Roy was finding himself hard-pressed not to laugh now. "We'll be enclosed in the lightjet, anyway -- I just figured it was better not to leave it lying around. You look good in it, though," he added fondly. A little self-aggrandizing, maybe, but he didn't care. Ram was his program; he'd look great in anything.


	5. Chapter 5

The lightjet was sleek vehicle, beautiful despite the scar that had warped the wing. Once Roy had fed new power into its circuitry, it only took a few moments to debug the external render and tighten the wing's code up again. Since Ram hadn't seen one of these before, Roy talked a little about the different classes of jets as he rezzed a windshield out of the optional specs and shuffled some of the jet's code around to accommodate an extra body. With any luck, the jet would read them as a single large program and have no trouble carrying them.  
  
Lightjet interiors were comfy, as a rule, with tight harnesses that practically made the pilot one with the vehicle -- a necessity, Roy felt, because who wanted to rattle around the cockpit while making a tight turn? He adjusted the harness so it would hold him and Ram together, and keep them relatively steady as they moved. "Not that there'll be any hairpin turns on the flight back," he explained. "Just a steady lift up to flight altitude and a straight line to the Grid. Twenty minutes at the max. If you want, we can even get off and take the train into my usual sector." He'd been planning on shooting straight for the Arena, but couldn't take Ram there yet, and didn't want to leave him alone.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s first look at the lightjet was…well, he couldn’t put a word on it, but the last time he’d felt like this was the first day they’d tossed him into Lightcycles training.

He hadn’t done well. Enough said.

With nothing to do but wait as Roy puttered about, he took to studying the craft, which seemed originally designed for a single occupant. That didn’t stop the User from expanding it to fit two, though Ram was dubious about whether the craft’s coding could handle the added modifications. No offense to R_Kleinberg7, of course, but Ram preferred to be aware of the possibility he might die a horrible, fiery death-from-above.

“Are you sure this thing is…er…airworthy?” he asked hesitantly, eying the burnt and jagged edge that was the clear reason for the lightjet’s current state of malfunction. Idly, he wondered what could have caused such damage – and then quickly retracted the thought. He didn’t want to know. He blinked as the jet’s body went wire-frame for a few picocycles, before reverting back to a whole and hale undamaged state.

Roy’s assurances that it _was_ were only slightly encouraging. As the User promised a smooth and trouble-free flight, Ram found himself chewing on the tip of his gloved fingers. Why did he have the feeling of impending disaster?

Oh, right. His risk analysis calculators. He shut them off and instantly felt (mostly) better.

“If – if you have something more important to check on first, I don’t mind,” he suggested, wondering what a train was as he nervously climbed into the cockpit of the lightcraft behind Roy and fiddled with the harness for a moment before figuring it out and strapping in. There wasn’t quite enough space to respect personal bubbles; as it was, Ram had to lean forward, snuggled up with his chest pressed to Roy’s back, arms around the User’s waist, to be any sort of comfortable.

The cockpit closed, sealing them in, and a brief sensation of vertigo from his glitched spatial balancers as they lifted off made Ram shut his eyes and groan quietly, barely audible.

 _Gridbugs_ , he hated flying.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As far as Roy was concerned, there weren't any personal bubbles to worry about unless Ram needed one. He'd slung the cloak back across his shoulders before they climbed in -- it made a cushion of sorts between his disc and Ram's chest -- and he waited until everything was secure, with Ram holding on a little too tightly for a routine flight, before starting the liftoff sequence. There'd even been a little cargo chest in the back for the offending helmet.  
  
"It's gonna be okay," he said reassuringly, tilting his head back against Ram's as the jet rose smoothly. "We're good as new now, and I only got hit the first time because I'd just come out of the Sailer tunnel and didn't have time to scan the weather patterns. I'll stick to the low-potential areas and we'll be fine."  
  
Still, as they slid gracefully out of the shadows of the rocks and into the full lights of the distant Portal and the not-so-distant City, he resolved to make the trip as gentle as possible.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s head shot up so fast he clunked his head against the overhead ceiling, and now he was wishing he’d worn his helmet instead of enthusiastically stashing it in the cargo hold when Roy had offered. He winced and swore under his breath, untangling an arm to rub the sore spot. If this kept up, he’d have a cracked skull to worry about along with his fritzed memory banks.

“Wait, you were h- _ktch_ - _hit_?” He repeated, a note of anxiety pitching his voice higher. (And the blasted hiccup was back again!) “You said you got damaged in the Sailer c- _ktch_ -corridor.” And wasn’t _that_ another worry to pile on. Ram had no idea if his diagnostic routines could tell if a User was damaged. Roy had seemed fine at the pool, so he hadn’t mentioned it, but there was a big difference between being thrown off by a Sailer’s wake (which was what Ram had taken Roy’s explanation to mean) and a _mid-air collision_.

“I thought you meant you got t- _ktch_ -tossed around by the wake field,” he continued, tightening his grip on the User’s waist. “You didn’t m- _ktch_ -mention getting hit by something! Is that normal?” He’d been consoling himself with the data that travelling by air, while always having the threat of plummeting to the ground, at least had nothing impeding its path. The sky was supposed to be relatively clear of obstacles.

Ooo---oOo---ooO

"Ram -- hey!" Roy's knuckles went white on the controls, trying not to let the jet waver with his passenger panicking behind him. "It's just lightning, electrical discharge from negative to positive potential, that's why most people take the Solar Sailer, but if I'd waited I'd still be out there now....."  
  
If Ram thought the sky should be free of obstacles, it was lucky they weren't flying above the Sea of Simulation, where raw matter had already accrued above the water again in the time since the reintegration. Here, at least, they didn't have to worry about giant floating rocks.  
  
He tried to breathe easier, hoping to communicate some of his own calm and trying not to let the fear in Ram's voice get to him. "The only reason I got hit was because it happened the second I got out of the corridor, before I had a chance to recalibrate. The odds were a million to one."  
  
..The odds of another strike nearby, though, weren't low at all. Letting the jet's path curve smoothly to one side, Roy guided it well clear of the danger zone. "There's going to be another one over that way -- _way_ over that way. It's a normal thing, just a lot of light and noise. You don't have to look if you don't want to. It's not gonna hit us, Ram -- I promise."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram risked glancing out to the side, resolutely keeping his gaze level and not looking down – sure enough, amidst the dark, sculpted shadows that made up the cloud cover, a static charge was building, crackling in misty, white light over the curves. It was eerily beautiful, for all of two nanocycles.

It discharged a picocycle later in a violent burst of jagged electric sparks, cutting downward through the open air a bit closer than the instruments had predicted. While it was certainly no danger to the small aircraft, the noise was still deafening. The resultant shockwave from the discharge made the jet wobble badly.

Turbulence was hardly going to fell a User-driven lightjet, but Ram, on his part, let out a short scream, more terrified by the shaking craft than of the thunder. By the time his auditory sensors had stopped ringing, he had buried his head against Roy’s back and was muttering non-stop binary pleas and curses.

He managed to regain control of his voice long enough to offer one piece of wisdom.

“I am an Actuary, Roy,” Ram said shakily, clinging to the User’s torso and screwing his eyes shut. “Do not qu- _ktch_ -quote me the odds on anything – the odds can _lie_.”

With that, he buried his head against Roy’s cloak once more and returned to muttering, fingers digging into the circuit lines on Roy’s front. The tactile contact to the User’s soothing warmth of presence was enough to keep him from having a complete panic meltdown, but he kept that posture the rest of the twenty-minute flight, not saying a single intelligible word.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Even for Roy, who'd been trying to keep an even hull so Ram's first jet flight wouldn't be a _complete disaster_ , that was way too close for comfort. The scream, right in his ear, was chilling, and if he hadn't known with every joule of the energy he was directing through the craft that nothing had physically harmed his passenger, he would have been panicking himself.  
  
Ram was scared of the lightning.  
  
It might've been funny in other circumstances, but he'd just arrived from a world where he was being _electroshocked_.  
  
Roy silently cursed the odds, furious with himself for not making the connection sooner, and nodded, promising not to talk probability again. From time to time, as the lightning became infrequent -- and only when the jet had been level for long enough that it wouldn't seem reckless -- he took one hand off the controls and wrapped it around Ram's arms, a silent reminder that he wasn't letting go either.  
  
They sailed into the City that way, a quick ping to Security identifying himself and Ram so they'd have no Recognizer trouble. Roy thought briefly about landing so they could take the train the rest of the way, but at this point he was more interested in getting Ram safely home. He'd taken his temporary flat -- a necessity with the amount of time he spent on both Grids these days -- in a building with a jetpad on the roof for exactly this reason.  
  
He told Ram some more about the Grid as they flew, explaining -- with little detail; there'd be time for that later -- that both of them were in the future right now, but not _the_ future, just one possible one; that there'd been a war here recently, but it was mostly over now; that the good guys were in charge, and that the system was free and usually safe; that duplicates rezzed in all the time, but there was room for everyone. When his building came in sight, he patted Ram's hand and shifted back to the controls.  
  
"Almost there," he said softly. "We can land on the roof. Then it's just a short elevator ride down."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram nodded silently against Roy’s back, the first reaction the User had drawn from him since the near-miss of the lightning strike, although he had stopped muttering somewhere at the halfway point of their journey. His face was still hidden against the fabric of the cloak, and as the jet tilted to veer towards the rooftops of the apartment complex, his grip tightened.

The static tingle of the electric discharge that the lightning had given off had sent him a few rather discomforting flashbacks during his first bout of User-prayers, but they had fallen to the side and been easily forgotten, distracted as he was by the buoyant, rocking motion of the flight. Every adjustment Roy made, no matter how small, was dizzying to his damaged balancers, and he was just thankful he’d purged everything from his systems back at the spring. He’d spent the silent portion of the trip just breathing through the bouts of nausea, determined not to test whether he really was running empty and potentially ruin the User’s clothes.

The jet gave a lurch as it touched down, along with Ram’s holding tanks, and the actuary groaned, gritting his teeth, until the vehicle had come to a complete stop.

As Roy deactivated the overhead canopy and climbed out, Ram stayed put for a moment, waiting for his head to stop spinning. When he was fairly sure he could stand up without falling over, he grabbed Roy’s offered hand and climbed out.

His unsteady legs didn’t want to hold him up, and he sat down on the wing of the jet, pressing the heel of a palm into his eyes.

“…’M okay,” he groaned, as the User hovered over him worriedly. “Just motion-sick; not sure if worse…or horribly worse…than Solar Sailer.” He gave an amused, weak huff of laughter.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy leaned on the wing beside him, frowning. He'd never been motion-sick on the Grid... but then, he'd never written hacker code into his version of Ram, either. "Think I could look at your disc when we get inside?" he asked. "Or maybe now. Least I could do is get rid of those hiccups."  
  
He could check for further instability, too. He was sure he'd patched up anything that had been propagating errors before, but Ram was definitely worse off than he'd been, and he'd hit his head twice since the overhaul.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Sure thing; I know what’s causing the vertigo, anyways.” Ram scrubbed a hand over his face and laughed again, blearily. “Just gimme a picocyc, I’ll be okay to walk.” He shut his eyes, breathing deeply, and re-routed a few conduits until his head felt less like a gridbug was chewing on it.

Finally, he stood up, moving slowly – he wasn’t entirely sure his balance would hold. When it did, he breathed a relieved sigh, and finally opened his eyes.

And his jaw dropped open.

Ram had kept his eyes shut the entire flight, and so had missed their entrance into the city, their landing; even climbing out of the jet, he’d been too dizzy to properly notice his surroundings. Now, he moved forward, almost in a trance, only halted by Roy’s watchful hand on his arm (likely preventing him from likely walking right off the side of the building.)

Whether Roy’s apartment building was in a prime spot, or if all views from the living quarters looked as stunning, Ram didn’t know. What he did know was right in front of him – the free Grid stretching out in an incredible panorama, distant tower spires of the main Command facilities the epicentre of the vista, etched in dark shapes lit with neon circuitry. Beautiful, vibrant, _alive_ , in a way Encom’s system hadn’t been for _cycles_.

The sight made discharge pool in the corners of his eyes, and he covered his mouth with a hand, overwhelmed.

~ _Infinite realms_ ,~ he breathed. “Tron, I wish you could see this.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Sure thing," said Roy, and then paused in embarrassed bemusement as he belatedly registered the unconscious echo. "...If you're feeling anything unusual, let me know, okay?"  
  
Ram's eyes closed, and Roy peered up at him, taking the opportunity to study him while he was recollecting himself. The program's curly hair had dried and regained its usual bounce; the helmet, still in the lightjet, could be left there until called for. Ram looked tired, sick, drained, a little lost -- none of which was surprising, after what he'd been through. There was still a scar on his hand; odd that it hadn't healed over when Roy had patched that place in his code.  
  
His circuits were steady, though, and that was a good sign. He looked like he could make it downstairs. So when he straightened, Roy smiled, willing to leave the disc for later.  
  
And then Ram nearly walked off the roof.  
  
Well, almost. He did just about stop in time, but Roy grabbed his arm anyway -- he wasn't about to leave it to chance or to Ram's currently debatable sense of balance. He couldn't blame the awestruck program, though. The building hadn't particularly been chosen for its view, but it was hard to find a bad view in Tron City.   
  
Roy had been practically living on one Grid or another for several months now, ever since the Portal had blipped him down here in the first place; the system back in his own world was much like this one, and he hadn't really thought about what it might look like to programs who'd known a different life in an older system. But he had to admit it was especially pretty today, with another few sectors lit that had still been dark last time he'd been here, lightcycles zipping sporadically across a distant bridge, jets and Recos of different colors populating the sky, pedestrians ambling along streets and walkways, windows glowing softly, and the elegant system architecture lighting everyone's way. Seen anew through Ram's eyes, it took Roy's breath away too.  
  
"Welcome to the Free Grid," murmured Roy after a moment, feeling a lump in his throat again. "It all looks like this... I can't wait to take you around and show you everything. Ever been to a park? There's one in the middle of town -- it's really something else."  
  
He couldn't promise that Tron would see it too. It was too early; there were too many variables. But he could tuck his arm more securely around Ram's and promise silently that if it was possible, he'd do all he could to make it true.

  
  
They didn't see anyone on the way down to his flat -- just as well, since his neighbors were generally friendly and Ram needed rest and quiet far more than he needed to be fussed over by concerned strangers. In deference to his dizziness, they'd taken the stairs, and were just turning the corner into Roy's hallway when elevator doors opened at the other end and another program stepped out.  
  
Another Ram. Dark-clad and bare-headed in current Grid style, somewhat out of breath from dropping everything and racing over as soon as he'd heard his User was in-system, frozen for a moment by the condition his double was in and then striding forward in concern.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“I’d like that,” Ram murmured, still enthralled by the cityscape. But the User’s arm wrapped more firmly around his own, drawing him from his stupor, and with great reluctance he turned his head away from the sight, wiping his eyes clear with a wet, embarrassed giggle. “Sorry. Inside, right; can’t stand here gawking all cycle.” There were things to do that took priority over being a tourist.

Retrieving his helmet from the jet’s cargo hold (wouldn’t do to forget it, after all – though he kept it tucked under his arm rather than put it on again), Ram followed Roy down the stairs, his good hand sliding on the railing the whole way down. If he’d felt more alert, he might’ve skipped a flight or two entirely by swinging his legs forward and letting momentum carry him down on his palms. But the palm of his damaged hand was starting to ache again, and his headache throbbed with every few descended steps. He was very glad of Roy’s stable hold on his arm, keeping him in balance.

By the time they reached the User’s floor, most of the residual motion-sickness had levelled off, now that the ground was relatively stable under his feet. He’d started talking again, questioning Roy about _what, exactly, a ‘park’ was_ , and _did it have anything to do with stopping vehicles, or was it another one of those words that gave multiple outputs of meaning_ , when the noise of an elevator door drew his attention.

Another program had emerged, and after pausing for a moment with what was probably shock, was quickly making his way down the hall towards them. Ram didn’t blame him for being surprised; they _were_ wearing the same face. Which in turn was Roy’s face, and assuming this wasn’t a duplicate User, this had to be another of Roy’s programs. The actuary smiled warmly, readying a greeting ping, and straightened up.

When he did, he felt an automatic subroutine kick in, one that was designed to recognise different programs from the same User. It would’ve been highly embarrassing otherwise, living in a system where most of the programs were all written by the same programmer, to address someone as ‘M1-KAL’ when their name was ‘ST3V.’ This subroutine shuffled through memory and data files and pulled the relevant ones up to instantly tell him if he had met this particular version of R_Kleinberg7’s brood before.

Except the necessary conduits were fried, and it was reaching for files that were, unbeknownst to Ram, not actually _there_.

He winced, pressing a hand to his head as electricity sparked over his logic circuits, trying to cross pathways that were too damaged to hold the charge in. A message in red flashed across his vision: ERROR: FILE CORRUPTION >> MEMORY BANKS DAMAGED. DATA NOT FOUND.

And then, WARNING: NEUROLOGICAL CIRCUITS 70% COMPROMISED >> FAILURE IMMINENT.

And then, perhaps most worryingly, ERROR: ELECTRICAL MALFUNCTION >> SHUTTING DOWN TO PREVENT SYSTEM FAILURE.

To Roy and the other Ram, this all happened fairly quickly. Ram only seemed to pause for a second after wincing, before his eyes rolled up in his head, his grip on his helmet went slack, and he crumpled, sagging heavily against Roy, his circuit array dimming drastically. He was, in two words, out cold.


	6. Chapter 6

If Ram had been okay, Roy would've happily stood up there gawking for the rest of the millicycle; but his program's well-being came first. He grinned at the new barrage of questions and answered cheerfully and at length, glad to contribute a distraction as they descended, and glad as well that Ram's dizziness was leveling off.  
  
He clutched Ram's arm more tightly when the other curly-headed program appeared at the end of the hall, relief washing over him even as all his worries about the bombings surged forward again. At least _someone_ was all right, and now they wouldn't have to spend time trying to track down who--  
  
"-- _Ram_!"  
  
Roy would never know afterwards if he'd been the one to cry out as the program beside him collapsed into his arms, or if the other Ram had done so, or if it'd been both of them. One minute Ram had been fine, and then he was out like a light.   
  
The other Ram had sprung forward to help support his double, exchanging breathless greetings with his User as Roy, one arm around the unconscious program's waist, tapped awkwardly into the disc-port access point with his free hand, needing to know _now_ what had happened and how fast it was compromising him. The dim circuits were the most worrying thing. Roy didn't think he'd ever get used to that.   
  
"He's stable," Roy reported after a tense moment of scrolling through the limited data. "Shut down for some reason...." He didn't have to say anything further -- Ram-from-the-Grid was already hoisting Ram-from-ENCOM up onto his shoulder, leaving him to key open the door and nudge the fallen helmet inside with his foot.  
  
  
They got Ram situated on the folding couch in Roy's little apartment, between a huge picture window (conveniently opaque from the outside) and a constantly changing array of photographs along the other wall, pictures of friends and colleagues from both Grids and from the User world. Roy, feeling the day catching up with him again, decided to concentrate on Ram's disc rather than asking for news right away, and the other Ram sat nearby to watch, turning the ENCOM helmet over and over in his hands and pausing now and then to rub his thumb over an unfamiliar scar in the material.  
  
The physical damage that Roy hadn't dealt with earlier still lingered: mostly tiny errors and breaks in the command lines, easily soothed away; they melted from Ram's configuration as he touched them, not needing a resync to kick in. But there were so many of them, clustered through the surface code -- and a couple of bigger problems as well: for one thing, Ram's palm, the scar's structure seeded with destructive live processes carrying his own signature. And his spatial distance calculators were completely dead, frozen by a sudden massive power spike that had ripped through his functions and surged out of him in an inexplicable prequel to the further harm done by the decompiler.  
  
Well: that explained the motion-sickness.  
  
Roy must've made some sound, because Ram's voice -- momentarily confusing as the User looked quickly up toward the still, quiet form on the couch before refocusing on his other program -- broke into his thoughts.  
  
"What do you see?"  
  
"Some things I can't explain," murmured Roy, a hand still curled just outside the disc's shining readouts. "I thought you couldn't cut yourselves with your discs?"  
  
Ram glanced at his double's hand, frowning in comprehension. "They're supposed to be safe, but theoretically you could roll back the countermeasures. It's obviously not a good idea, though."  
  
"Hmm." Roy bit his lip, staring at the scar-code, sifting through the most likely ways to untangle it. Ram's ability to balance properly was easily reset. But as far as could be told, neither the scar nor the spatial distance calculators had anything to do with his shutdown, and when a couple of attempts at the scar damage only resulted in its resetting itself, he frowned, locked it off for later study, and moved on.   
  
Ram bit his lip too as Roy delved further, tracing the short directly this time. After a few more moments, he stood and headed for the kitchen (a User term somewhat nicer than 'supply dump'), brushing a curl from his double's forehead as he passed. Maybe he couldn't help the other Ram, but ZackAttack was tired and hungry, and he _could_ do something about that.  
  
A couple moments later, Roy found it.  
  
A large swath of garbled code pulsed damage-red around Ram's memory banks, degrading itself before Roy's eyes. He expanded the area and error messages littered the status screens: surge warnings and overload alerts, an ugly map of the pileup of errors that had forced Ram into shut-down. One tiny notice below all the rest, time-stamped as the first error to have been generated, held the source of the cascade failure. [Unable to execute run.ident.PROG_RK7, ERROR: Memory Storage Module Missing or Corrupted].  
  
Roy bit off an exclamation of dismay as he carefully worked around the damaged paths. Of all the things that might have gone wrong with Ram's code, memory problems were among those he was least capable of healing. He could soothe over the damage, reroute or rewrite damaged subroutines, build new, empty modules if necessary, but the life experiences stored in these areas were unique and irreplaceable.  
  
First things first. The subroutine called upon to identify Ram's double had been cut off from the information it needed, and had pushed too hard in an attempt to get through. Roy rerouted the file path, created a simple, empty error message as a temporary stopgap for any other function trying to get through, and grimly set to work on the fried code.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The older-model Ram was dead weight as program and programmer hauled him into the apartment and onto the couch. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, it might’ve been comical to watch.

Situated on his back across the couch cushions, Ram’s face was pale in the wash of light from outside, all his circuitry dimmed except for the identifying mark at his sternum, which pulsed slow and steadily as a sign of hibernation. Occasionally his brow furrowed minutely, and the fingers on his damaged right hand twitched, as if caught in the throes of a dream, or a nightmare.

His disk, cradled in Roy’s lap, was slow to produce the familiar holographic interface, the old technology not suited for such a purpose but bending eventually to the User’s will and manifesting in a geodesic sphere of code and status-readouts. It told the same story as before, but without the distraction of power surges and the urgency of emergency repairs, Roy was able to read it closer, and smooth away the fractured code.

The damage that had been left behind now erased itself from his armour, the unlit patches of circuitry flickering weakly back to life before settling into the same dim glow as the rest, lingering scratches now closing over and becoming as smooth as the rest. Even some of the older armour scarring, half a lifetime of disk battles that came too close for comfort, vanished without a trace. Somehow, losing them made the program laying there look even younger.

When Roy touched the code that made up the damage to his palm, Ram’s hand spasmed and clenched, and his face contorted slightly, a quiet noise of distress whimpering from his vocal processor. He relaxed again as Roy partitioned off the code, but otherwise did not stir; between his fingers, the lingering damage sealed over and dulled to a darker shade of gray.

As Roy set to work on the code surrounding his memory banks, something soon became apparently clear. Although the identification subroutine had been the cause of the failure, there was simply no logical reason for it to have happened. With the primary degradation sealed off, a quick scan of the data files the subroutine had been trying to access showed none had been damaged – not in the way it believed them to be. There were a few small fractures, mostly in the more recent files, but all that would’ve caused was a few details to have been lost from a memory. And his timestamp recorders were still running smoothly, documenting everything that was happening.

Ram, though, was unaware of it all. He was caught up in a data-loop that seemed to cycle endlessly. He _was back in his cell, but how did he know it was his, he’d never been in a cell before, it was always the compound –_

_There was a program kneeling over him, a medic in red and green, looking like a Christmas decoration – Christmas? The word brought to mind flashes of insurance files from his long-term memory, a User holiday that always seemed to come with a few cycles of long runtimes, followed by a lengthy, well-deserved downtime. She was running a device over his damaged armour, mending the worst of the injuries that his repair function couldn’t heal, but – wait, had he been in a match? Why couldn’t he remember?_

_“What –” happened, he tried to ask, but his voice was frozen, unresponsive. Panic welled as he tried to move, and found himself incapable. A sudden spike of pain in his right hand made his fingers spasm and suddenly –_

_He was back in the compound, standing taller than anyone, gesturing with his free hand. He couldn’t hear the words he was saying, but the looks on the programs’ faces, on Tron’s face, were alarmed. And the feeling in pain in the palm of his hand was immense, cutting, burning into the code as the edge of his disk dug deeper, and the pain was moving now, upward, spreading throughout his system, licking like the caress of electrical overload –_

_And Sark’s face was staring down at him, a vicious grin, and he could hear someone screaming but it couldn’t be him, because he was paralyzed, his vision whiting out, the taste of an energy bleed on his tongue and ozone filling the air –_

“Sark!” he gasped on the tail end of a strangled, half-formed scream, coming awake with a jolt. For a moment he stared at nothing, eyes wide and unseeing, fingers gripped tightly to the unfamiliar fabric of the couch cushion and back as he panted for breath, the remnants of the memory loop too vivid to shake. And then he became aware of his surroundings, the worried presence of Roy and the other program who shared his face.

“’M okay,” he reassured automatically, though his head ached – lingering after-effects of the shut-down – and his voice shook as he shut his eyes, burying his fingers in the tangled mess of curls that hung limply over his forehead.

The lack of pain registered a picocycle later and he pulled his hand away, staring at the dull scar that crossed his palm. “You fixed it,” he murmured, and looked at Roy. Then he looked at the other doppelganger, and then at their new surroundings. A slight crease appeared in his brow.

“Wait, did I miss something? Weren’t we in the hall?” He asked, confused.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The other Ram returned with both liquid and solid energy, the latter in a low-density form called "popcorn" that ZackAttack had wasted no time introducing to his environment on both Grids, shortly before Roy finished his work on the compromised data. It had been a great relief to find that Ram's memory files were in fact present, and all that had to be done was to rebuild the corrupted access paths, most of which he could do from memory and the rest by extrapolation. When he was done, the code shone a uniform blue.  
  
It was an effort to shake himself out of the concentration he'd needed for the work, but he looked up with satisfaction in his face. The scar on Ram's hand would still be there, but he'd sealed it from corrupting itself further, and everything else was done, including some traumatic dissociations apparently caused by hitting his head; all else would be time and rest.  
  
"It's gonna be a major sync," Roy found himself explaining as he closed the disc interface. He had a confused feeling that Ram probably knew that already, but talking seemed like a good way of keeping focused; and Ram was nodding, leaning over the back of the couch to carefully lift his double's head and shoulders as Roy slid the disc back where it belonged. For a moment very little happened; the dormant program's circuits flickered as the internal injuries sorted themselves out and his processes booted and ran internal checks. Then--  
  
(--the scream took Ram back thousands of cycles -- different system, different life, yet the same life for all that, the same old runaround; programs disappearing, loyalties in question, hope a thin uncertain proposition standing against all odds, and no internal reason in it, except for some glitch-heads following orders for their own twisted satisfaction--)  
  
"It's okay," he found himself saying, settling a steadying hand on his brother's shoulder when he seemed more aware of his surroundings; "it's okay... he's gone."  
  
He and Roy stayed close, but gave Ram room to sit up and collect himself. "Not quite," Roy clarified, nodding at the still-scarred hand. "I partitioned that scar off, but it's your own attack subroutines in there and that'll just be a little more complicated to get out completely."  
  
"You kind of conked out," Ram added, with a faint grin. "I was coming to visit anyway so we brought you in. This is Roy's place when he's on the Grid; what do you think of it?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram nodded quietly as Roy commented on the state of his hand.

“At least it doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, flexing his fingers, running a thumb over the outline patterned into his glove. He wasn’t quite ready to give his own explanation as to why the scar was self-inflicted – former drunken ramblings didn’t count. Shoving the memories aside, he closed his fingers over the discolouration, dropped his fist to his side, and took a better look around the room.

“Cluttered,” he said, after a moment of study, and gave them a lopsided grin. “I mean that in a good way, honest.” The compound, while full of programs, was starkly barren of personal items. Roy’s apartment felt lived-in, inviting.

The pictures cycling through the frames on the wall caught his eye. Drawn by curiosity, Ram rose halfway off the couch, moving slowly as he anticipated a new round of dizziness. When it didn’t come, he sat back down abruptly, blinking.

“Well, that’s a novel feeling. You reset my balancers too?” He’d always had a little trouble with those. His incomplete code compile had left him with something akin to double-vision at times, trying to run the stocky, steadfast actuarial movements with the more stealthy motion of an infiltrator. Whatever Roy had done had left him absent of that; Ram felt steadier on his feet than he had in cycles. He grinned broadly and completed his rising, stretching his back thoroughly and giving a noise of satisfaction.

“Oh wow, that feels good. That is just –” _/perfect-warm-smooth-excellent_ , he finished with a ping, after a moment’s struggle to find the right word. “Thank you, Roy.”

He smiled warmly for a moment, but it faded slightly as he rubbed the back of his head. “What happened exactly? I…It’s fuzzy. I remember the jet landing, and seeing you,” he nodded to his brother, “but I don’t actually remember blacking out.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy smiled, glad it didn't hurt -- explanations could wait till later. At Ram's next words, he grinned with self-conscious pride. They didn't have to know this place was meticulously neat and organized compared to his apartment back in the User world, did they?  
  
"Wait'll you see the rest of it." The other Ram bounced on his heels; it was hard not to want to pull his brother out into the new world they were in and show him everything, building a foundation of new experiences to fill the wounds of the past. And between the lot of them, the new Ram would never have to worry about a place to stay while he acclimated.  
  
"Yeah," Roy answered; "it looked like you've been having trouble with those for a while. Must've been something....." He broke off, uncertain how to explain that _he_ hadn't been the one to leave those functions hanging. Honestly, he probably _would_ have in his double's place; they would have seemed harmless from the outside, but working through the disc.... it was different.  
  
He watched Ram stretch with a proud smile, his other program beaming at his side, both delighted at the change. The Grid's Ram glanced at his User as the ping came through, deciding to translate it later; they really had to do _something_ about Users not understanding pings. But the sentiment got through, he could tell, as Roy clasped the newly steady program's arm with a heartfelt, "Anytime."  
  
At the question, Roy's brows furrowed quizzically. "Near as I can tell, you had a short." Among numerous other shorts -- but this one had triggered a cascade. "Trouble is, the rest of it shouldn't have happened; the file path was fine when I reconnected it...."  
  
"So it was kinda my fault," finished the second Ram ruefully. "I showed up and you just keeled over. But you should be okay now." As nervous as ZackAttack had been, Ram knew he'd done the best job he possibly could.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Don’t worry about it,” Ram said, waving off Roy’s uncertain look – and mistakenly assuming it to be guilt over the original incomplete code-work – with a genuine smile. “It’s not your fault I was grabbed out of a recompile. I’d almost gotten used to it.” There was a slightly bitter tension in those words, directed more towards the fact he’d _had_ to get used to it at all. It was just another thing to begrudge to Sark’s null-unit goons.

Glitch, he felt steady enough now that he could probably _match_ Tron in practice, instead of barely keeping up. A memory flickered, the captured look of dumbfounded shock on the security program’s face when Ram had finally scored a surprise hit with his disk. The memory made him smile in fond amusement...and then the smile faded, as he remembered Tron wasn’t here.

A brief twinge ached behind his temple, too fleeting to be worth mentioning. These memory flashes, too vivid to be normal, were starting to worry him. Roy had diagnosed the cause of the crash as an electrical short, with no damage to his memory banks. The news came as a relief to the program, but also grew new concerns. If they weren’t damaged, what was causing the loops?

His circuit array pulsed faintly with embarrassment and rubbed the back of his head. “Good to hear it was just a short, at least. I was a little worried.”

The infiltrator – for with his code fixed, or at least repaired more substantially, Ram was more of one than an actuary, now – turned his attention to his brother at the next diagnosis, and offered him a wry smirk.

“I do feel a lot better. Sorry I didn’t get to introduce myself properly,” he apologised, and followed with an info-ping of _/desg:Ram-RK78206_. “So, I take it people fainting at your feet isn’t the usual reaction you get?” The tease was accompanied by a light nudge to the actuary’s shoulder with his own, attention drawn to the bowl of off-white puffy things in the bowl in his brother’s hands. “I have to ask: what is that stuff?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy grimaced in sympathy, deciding to leave the question of identity for a private conversation. He clapped Ram on the shoulder. "I want to keep an eye on it, at least to begin with -- make sure it doesn't happen again." Hard to say it wouldn't when he didn't know what had caused it in the first place.  
  
"No problem," grinned the Stats program, pinging _/desg:Ram-ZA609010; welcome-amusement-~you got RK, some programs have all the luck!_ back at him. "No; I mean, sometimes they go all weak-kneed in awe, but I haven't had anybody actually collapse yet." _Except some of the new rerezzes_ \-- but he kept his voice light and teasing, holding that thought to himself.  
  
He'd picked up the bowl intending to wave it under Roy's nose and let the scent take over where their User's weariness had neglected to register it; but offering it to his double was just as good an idea, and he gleefully echoed, "Popcorn!" in time with Roy's surprised exclamation. "Solid-state energy," he explained, and Roy took a few kernels and added with a grin, "It's modeled after something in my world -- only better, 'cos it doesn't get stuck in your teeth. Alan and I went through truckloads of this stuff back in the day."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram ignored the tiny flutter in his chest at Roy’s casual mention of Alan-One and mimicked the User, humming curiously as he plucked a few puffy kernels from the top of the mound and inspecting them up close. The faint scent that had been merely an allure before now filled his olfactory sensors with an enticing new aroma unlike any energy he’d encountered before. Having never experienced it, he was at a loss for descriptors, but it didn’t smell bad at all. In fact, it was positively mouth-watering, especially after the sludge he’d been rationed on in the Compound.

Ram and Roy didn’t seem harmed by the stuff. And, Ram thought ruefully, if the worst came to pass and he wound up with toxic shock, they had a User on hand to remedy the problem immediately. Boldly, he popped one of the kernels into his mouth, chewed, and made a surprised, pleased sound.

If the smell of the popcorn had been enticing, the flavour was practically _addictive_. It was savoury without being overwhelming, salty, smoky, and aromatic, with just the barest hint of sweetness left over from the energy that had been used to create it. And the amount of energy that made up the kernel was perfect, the portions small enough to allow for mass consumption without being too filling, while still being satisfactory. It was a snack food, Ram could instantly tell; not something to replace a full energy ration, but something to take the edge off the power drain between primary fuelling periods.

The popcorn tasted fantastic, and it was easy to see why Roy swore by the stuff (Ram said as much to the User.) But Ram, whose energy levels were still above peak, found he could only consume a few kernels before the tiny spikes of power made his holding tanks churn warningly, threatening another purge of the unnecessary excess. His enthusiasm waned and he ate his last kernel with slow, cautious nibbles, letting his attention wander around the room.

“I’m way too overcharged,” he cited as his excuse when offered more, waving it off with an unsteady smile. “But it tasted great.” Leaning briefly against his brother’s shoulder with an affectionate _/gratitude-thanks_ , Ram chose to leave User and Program fussing over who got more of the remainder. The infiltrator wandered curiously around the flat, needing to take the edge off of this itch to _move_.

It was a marvel at how smooth and quiet his tread had become, and he let himself be distracted by that for a few nanocycles, before his prowl took him near the wall of picture frames, and something new caught his eye. He stilled, canting his head curiously as he edged closer, peering at the individual photos.

There were certainly a lot of them. He didn’t recognise many of the faces, but a few stood out.

There was a group photo of a clan of people surrounded by a bunch of green stuff on the ground that sort-of resembled data-growth, with a sky the light blue colour of Ram’s overcharged circuit array. From the setting, Ram guessed they had to be Users, and from their resemblance to one-another, they had to be Roy’s family. Most of them had Roy’s curly hair; some were male, some female, some very small and young (beta-Users, maybe?), some lined with more wrinkles than the old Tower Guardians. Roy himself was somewhere in the middle of the gathering, grinning widely, his eye-lenses askew.

Ram couldn’t help but grin back at the photo, even as his eyes flicked to the next one, and his air processors skipped a rotation. This photo had three people in it, seated at some sort of round bench around a table, with Roy instantly recognisable on the left, captured mid-laugh. The taller man sitting next to him had his arm around the shoulders of a young woman with blonde hair, who looked at her companions with fond amusement. The man wore the same sort of eye-lenses Roy did; his brown hair was shaggier, and his mouth was quirked up in a goofy smirk, but that face was recognisably Tron’s.

Roy had said he knew Alan-One. And here was proof, staring Ram right in the face. Alan-One was almost as much of a legend for Ram as Tron was for the other programs. It was hard not to feel a bit awestruck.

Rapidly, Ram began scanning the other pictures, eager for more glimpses at the User’s world. There were quite a few, some with Roy in them, some with Alan-One and the woman. Ram didn’t recognise her, but it was obvious they were good friends. Perhaps she was the User of Yori, whom Tron had rarely mentioned to Ram (but always with deep affection).

Not all of the pictures were light-hearted; in some, a slightly older Roy’s smile looked forced and drained, and Alan-One looked even more like his program; stiff, grim, determined. Ram wondered what hardship had befallen them, to make the Users look like conscripts from the Complex.

There were a few pictures of Grid landscape; lightcycle races in an arena that was teracycles beyond anything the MCP could ever dream up; several programs toasting glasses of energy with a white-suited emcee program in some sort of club; an older man, with a shock of greying hair and the aura of a Tower Guardian, though his simple, white circuit array on black robes said otherwise. There were even a few hastily-snapped shots of a program in black, head completely covered by a sleek, smooth helmet, though the pictures were too blurry to make out any sort of identifying symbols in the almost nonexistent circuit arrays.

Ram took it all in, wide-eyed and wondering, until his gaze landed on a particular picture and he found himself arrested.

Tron’s face stared out at him from two duplicate programs on either side of an excited Roy, each with a simpler version of the identifying symbol at the base of their throats. The circuit arrays were different, nuances that told Ram these programs were _Tron_ as much as Ram-ZA609010 was _him_. They weren’t the Tron he knew. But the sight put a damper on his enthusiasm.

He let his eyes slide to the next photo, not really registering the occupants as he stared into space, worry over his friend’s fate rising to swamp his curiosity. Memory files flickered, pulling up instances from the past, as a dull ache began forming in the back of his head.

Lost in thought, Ram rubbed his thumb absently over the scarring on his palm, not really aware of the motion. It was this posture he kept until his brother joined him – the Stats program no longer occupied with Roy, who had begun contacting people about the crisis on the Grid, and drawn over by the infiltrator’s sudden lack of motion.


	7. Chapter 7

Ram leaned back against his double as he passed the bowl over to Roy, reciprocating the friendly contact with a quiet _/np-takeyourtime_ ; there'd be plenty more later, even if he could convince their User to sit down and rest a little. To his practiced eye, Roy was visibly frayed around the edges; he couldn't fault his double, who'd been way worse off when the two had arrived, for not registering it during what had probably been his most disorienting millicycle _ever_. Roy had a way of subordinating his own health to the situation at hand; it was a tricky thing to catch, even for his friends.  
  
It was tricky, getting Roy fed and focused enough to run a quick external defrag on his outer layer (Outlands crud got into _everything_ ). The User wanted to know everything about the threefold attack -- what had been hit, who'd been behind it, who was still missing and who'd been confirmed to survive. Ram told as much as he knew, as succinctly as he could. Roy was shivering at the end of it, out of relief as much as the effort to stay calm, and Ram hugged him tightly, glad their guest was focused on the picture-wall so he wouldn't have to worry too.  
  
He managed to extract a promise that Roy would get some rest before going anywhere, and left him to ping Flynn and anyone else he needed to check in with. Despite the lightjet, Roy had barely reached Tron City before the Solar Sailer he should have taken; the news would get around, and he'd want them to know everything was okay.  
  
Ram's double had meanwhile gone still, drifting off into a loop while looking at all the photos. The actuary loped over, coming up beside him as he stared at one of the images -- a fairly innocuous gathering of maintenance programs at the End of Line, notable mainly for Eckert photobombing the scene.  
  
"Hey," Ram said softly, slipping a hand under his brother's arm to ease his restless fingers away from the scar.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The gentle touch curving under his arm broke the infiltrator from the recursive loop of memories and Ram visibly startled; his left hand spasmed in a quickly aborted move to reach for his disk. He relaxed when he realised the cause, radiating faint _/embarrassment_ along the physical conduit of his brother’s hands on his bracer.

 _/sorry-threat reflex-habit_ , Ram pinged silently, swallowing and closing his fingers over the discoloured patch on his glove. ~ _Didn’t mean…I must’ve spaced out for a nanocycle.~_ He lifted a hand to scratch fingers through his curls, closing his eyes briefly. There was a fresh ache behind his temple, but he chalked it up to the repairs not yet settling in. With a sigh, he opened his eyes and glanced briefly over at Roy, then back to the actuary standing next to him.

Just the idea of speaking vocally made him feel exhausted. He stuck to binary comms.

~ _Is everything alright here? Roy wouldn’t tell me much; too worried to explain things, but I got the sense there was trouble_.~

He listened, head tilted, as the other Ram briefly outlined the troubles that had befallen the Grid while Roy had been away, and winced guiltily, glancing in Roy’s direction again. He’d been too disorientated and focused on his own glitches to really notice how shaken the User had been throughout Ram’s rescue. Even now, with food, and a defrag, and more positive news to alleviate his fears on his mind, Roy looked on the verge of what Ram would’ve called a systems crash.

~ _Getting hit by glitch-fragged lighting probably didn’t help_ ,~ he muttered, unintentionally aloud.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram held on, sending a steady stream of _/hey-comfort-understanding-beenthere, safe-warmth-protection-peace_ as the tension ebbed. He wrapped his other arm around his brother's back, looking up at the pictures for a moment to let the infiltrator pull himself together.  
  
He sighed at the question, hanging his head a little, and sent back, _~Not really. There was a major attack in the city while he was gone. It's only been a couple of millicycles.... We're rebuilding but we lost a lot of good people.~_ He squeezed his eyes shut. _~Clu's behind it. He wants the system back.~_ Then, remembering that Ram might not have heard this Grid's history in detail, he added, _~Clu's basically... MCP-lite; he used to be the admin here before he lost his marbles.~_ A grim smile. _~We're free now and he doesn't like it.~_  
  
The other program's concerned look at Roy echoed the actuary's concern about both of them; Roy would probably have tried to involve himself in the action if he'd been alone, but he really needed some rest, and Ram's new brother wasn't far behind in that respect. Ram was just thinking about suggesting a little shut-eye when that last inadvertent comment came through.  
  
Unintentionally dropping the binary, his voice low but not low enough to stop Roy from looking up curiously, Ram stammered, "He did _what_!?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram grimaced at the damage report and sighed in long-suffering sympathy. He picked up the tail end of his brother’s broadcast and looped it back, reaching up to grasp the arm that lay across his shoulders in solidarity. The idea that another admin program had gone off the rails was _disappointingly_ unsurprising. They seemed to be prone to it, in Ram’s experience.

The other Ram’s outburst, however, had Ram rolling his eyes with a smirk that was more like his usual self. He should’ve figured that’d be one thing Roy would neglect to mention.

/ _nojoke-truth-Users:crazy_ , he pinged, and proceeded to expound on their somewhat harrowing journey across the outlands, transmitting a data packet of every (somewhat fuzzy) memory file he had on his first ‘encounter’ with the light jet’s previously less-than-perfect state of compilation as visual aide. (He ignored the way this made the ache behind his temples pulse; he just needed rest, time to heal, that was all.)

~ _And then he quotes the odds at me of it happening again_ ,~ he exclaimed with amused affront, waving a hand in expansive gesture. ~ _Picocycles before we almost get fried.~_ The program gave an incredulous laugh and shook his head. _~Tell me being danger-prone isn’t a usual thing with our User, because if it is, I am really starting to empathise with Tron, having to deal…with **me** all the…time._~

Ram’s shoulders slumped slightly, the wind gone from his sails, a furtive glance at the pictures. There was one directly in front of them, a companionable trio of programs in old-style armour: Ram, and Tron, and another Ram didn’t recognise but who sported a novice tunic from the MCP’s games. Tron was smiling, for once; to Ram, it was a rare sight, and made his core ache.

~ _I really hope he’s alright,~_ he murmured quietly. ~ _The last time I saw him…it wasn’t going too good for us._ ~ The infiltrator glanced at his right hand, still caught in the actuary’s grasp, and looked quickly back at the pictures before the tightness in his chest could manifest as something visible, swallowing. Needing a subject change desperately, he motioned to the photo, and spoke aloud for the first time. “Who is that, standing next to me? Er, him. Them.” Glitch, the tenses would be confusing here. “The beta in the novice tunic, I mean.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_/thanks-welcome_ , Ram answered, smiling a little. _/it'llbeokay_.  
  
He stared as the infiltrator explained what had happened, torn between dismay and, near the end, laughter. What the other Ram had gone through was no joke, but it was indeed just like Roy to take wild chances and downplay the cost to himself, especially when there were others involved.   
  
_~Only in a good cause,~_ he snickered. _~But those are a dime a dozen here.~_  
  
Roy, staring in bewilderment at the rapid-fire exchange of binary, finally raised his hands in frustration and muttered, "You guys do know this isn't fair, right?" as he went back to the lists scrolling over his screen. Impudently, Ram thumbed his nose and grinned. It was great, having their User around.~  
  
 _~He'll be all right after he gets a good rest cycle in,_ Ram concluded. _Something tells me you could use one too....~_ But the other Ram had gone quiet again, and this time Ram knew exactly what was wrong.  
  
 _/confidence.-reassurance.-faith,_ he sent, running his thumb over Ram's knuckles as he looked up at the picture.  
  
Tron was Tron. He'd get through. And they weren't going to leave it to chance, either.  
  
"Oh -- wait, you didn't meet Flynn yet? He's the User who broke us out of the Game Grid, at least in my past. It was a real eye-opener. Throwing him in the Games was the second-biggest mistake the MCP ever made. The first mistake.... well...." He smirked, waving a hand at the picture (taken on the Grid, with each of the trio having come from a different system, but that didn't matter). The MCP's biggest mistake had been letting Flynn anywhere near Tron.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“No, I’ve never seen him bef – _another_ User?” Ram exclaimed, at his brother and then back at the picture in disbelief. “You’re not serious. That guy?” The third man certainly didn’t look like a User. He _looked_ like a horrifically green Games conscript – the kind Ram dreaded being teamed up with in the Games, lest they get him get derezzed due to incompetence. Of course, Ram’s experience with Users was limited to Roy, who’d had time to hone his abilities on the Grid, and at least get more dignified grid-attire. And Ram had still assumed the programmer was a search program at first.

And there he’d gone again, making completely skewed assumptions. With an exhausted, somewhat unnerved laugh, the infiltrator shook his head, palming his face in his left hand and leaning into his brother’s solid presence.

“I think maybe you’re right about getting some rest,” he agreed. “I seem to be making a habit of meeting Users and calling them idiots.” He glanced sidelong at Roy for a moment, still somewhat mortified about what he’d said while delirious.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"You wouldn't think it, huh?" Ram chuckled again, remembering. "The first time I met him, he walked straight into a forcefield. I sure didn't think he was anything much. But he was the one who broke us out."  
  
He tightened his supporting arm, tilting his head against his brother's. The rest of the story could wait till later. Roy had closed his screen and stood, scrubbing a hand over his face as he wandered over to them, picking up the thread of the conversation where they'd left off.  
  
"Think we both should." Roy yawned and reached out an unsteady hand to pat Ram on the shoulder. "Ram, you're welcome to stick around as long as you want, and... Ram...." He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. "You're not going anywhere, huh?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The mental image of Flynn walking into a force field only made Ram crack up again, desperately fighting a fit of the giggles as Roy joined them. The hand on his shoulder gave him something to focus on besides the war between exhaustion and energy-overcharge. He managed to wrestle the giddy feeling under control enough to straighten up and nod.

“The only place I’m going is a proper bed,” he affirmed, and snorted with morbid amusement. “Been sleeping on hard floors and barracks cots too long, I’m probably liable to crash from shock if I use one. I want to get out of this armour first though; which way’s the refresher?” He wrinkled his nose, plucking at the edge of his chestplate. There was still raw energy mixed with data-growth pixel dust stuck in some of the crevices, and it _itched_.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Right this way." Taking over from the actuary, Roy tugged the tired program toward the hall. The Grid's Ram, following behind, ducked into the guest room to check which beds were rezzed. (There were technically six -- two bunkbeds with three levels each, quartering a cozy room with armchairs, its own comm station, and another picture window -- but for now, only the two main beds needed to be there, since Ram was pretty sure Roy didn't intend to retreat to his own room.)  
  
Roy joined him a moment later, leaving the other Ram to his cleanup, but looked so distracted that Ram finally pushed him into a chair near the door, so he could hear if anything happened.  
  
"It's just that I don't know what caused the short before," mumbled Roy through another yawn. "It shouldn't happen again, but who knows? And he really, really, really needs to get some sleep, his whole structure needs to integrate, there's so much internal stuff you guys do when you're recharging...."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram gave Roy a quiet mumble conveying gratitude as the User left him to his own devices, and surveyed the layout of the refresher unit – the ‘bathroom,’ Roy had called it, although Ram wasn’t sure why. Over against the far wall, the enclosed glass chamber of the defragger looked awfully inviting, but rather than make a direct beeline to it, Ram was instead drawn to the mirror screen hanging above the smaller cleansing station. Then he rested his hands on the sides of the countertop, leaning on it as he stared in weary resignation. The reflection that looked back at him hardly matched what Ram remembered of his own physical appearance.

~ _You look like you’ve been recycled through a trash bin_ ,~ he told the duplicate in the mirror. No wonder Roy and Ram had been concerned. Ram looked lean and pale, save for the dark circles under his eyes that spoke of stress and exhaustion, structurally weary even though his circuits were shining a high-energy shade of light blue. His armour had been cleansed of scarring and scratches by the work Roy had done on his disk, but it was still grimy and unkempt. He had a smudge of something black and greasy on his neck (and wasn’t sure he wanted to know what or how it had gotten there,) and his hair had dried in a nasty, tangled snarl, impurities left behind from the raw energy swim that had caked into the curls.

The infiltrator grimaced, and looked away from the mirror, fumbling with the detach points on his armour. In the room outside, the other two could hear the occasional litany of aggrieved mutters and sharp, short binary curses. The detach points were practically fused stiff by hexes of disuse and electroshock current, but Ram was very determined.

“C’mon, you stubborn little – ouch!” ~ _Glitching piece of malware_.~ He sucked on a sore finger, having removed his gloves first for more dexterity and gotten his digits pinched for his trouble. But persistence won out; eagerly, he shucked off every scrap of armour and shoved it into a corner of the defragger. It’d get clean at the same time he did.

Without the heavy additions, Ram felt…lighter. Smaller, more vulnerable; he shivered slightly, shaking off the sensation of ill-ease, and climbing into the defragger. He had a feeling this would take a while; he had cycles of accumulated material to slough off.

It did. From a User’s perspective, it took roughly two hours for Ram to exit the refreshing unit – it might’ve taken a bit less time, but the program had almost fallen asleep once or twice leaning against the wall of the defrag chamber, and he wasn’t sure if he’d lost time.

He crept almost shyly into the bedroom, fiddling with the hem of his sleeve. Not wanting to re-rezz his older format to sleep in, he’d tweaked a bit of his disk’s code and rezzed a pair of loose, grey trousers and tunic. They were a little oversized. He wasn’t adept at editing raw data like a User, and hadn’t been able to get them more precise to his measurements – either that, or his measurements were no longer what he remembered. Added to the pattern of circuitry that shimmered against the soft fabric, and the clean, frizzy mop of hair, he looked like a little kid in novelty pyjamas.

The infiltrator’s hands and feet were bare, and he kept rubbing absently at his right palm, a sign of the mild anxiety he hadn’t completely shaken since he’d removed his armour. He balked briefly when his roommates looked his way, and offered up a weak smile.

“Feeling a little exposed, having all that armour off. Is that weird?” He shrugged as if to dismiss the question and glanced at Roy. “I left it in a pile in the defragger; I can move it if you want me to.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram had sneaked up to the door once or twice, calling inside to check that nothing had gone wrong, promising Roy he'd come get him right away if he didn't hear an answer. But he'd assured his brother it was all right to take his time, too, and, in the meantime, argued Roy into a Space Evaders t-shirt and sweats, although the User refused to be tucked in yet.  
  
And had then predictably fallen asleep in one of the guest-room chairs.  
  
Ram was just wondering whether he could move him without waking him up when his brother appeared, looking a lot cleaner and more comfortable, albeit uncannily like one of Roy's little brothers on the picture-wall back in the living room. Roy, User instincts startling him awake, stretched creakily and twisted around to look the younger program over.  
  
"Not weird at all," smiled Ram. "You just need some time to adjust." And Roy yawned, "That's okay, cleanup can wait. Hey, you look a lot better... how do you feel?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram shared a look of fond amusement with his counterpart as the User stretched, and canted his head as he considered a response.

“Better,” was the final reply, as the infiltrator rubbed his neck and yawned heavily. “Well, mostly. Head still hurts a little, but the defrag really helped.” He eyed one of the beds longingly, but made no move to claim one; this wasn’t his domain, and he wasn’t sure if Roy had specific sleeping arrangements.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram grinned warmly back -- _/gottaloveit!_ \-- and Roy waved at the closest bed, staggering over to the next one. "Good -- hopefully you just need rest, but if it still bothers you after that I'll take a look.... There you go. For future reference, you don't need an invitation; we don't stand on ceremony much here." Especially on movie nights, when the room was packed and there were pillows and popcorn _everywhere_ , but that sort of thing could wait till Ram was more acclimated.  
  
He face-planted on the soft sheets, groaned in relief and pushed his head up just enough to add, "Sleep as long as you want. I'll be right here."  
  
"I think I'll stick around for a while," Ram commented, clapping Roy's shoulder gently. "Stats can send my reports sent here. You guys get some rest -- Roy, I'll come get you if there's anything you need to see, but I don't wanna hear a peep out of either of you for the rest of the millicycle.~"  
  
Roy snorted into his pillow at the teasing tone, and Ram headed out, pausing to pull his brother into a long, warm hug on the way.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram chuckled under his breath, though he still made no move towards the beds, lingering self-consciously in the middle of the room until the other Ram pulled him into a hug. He may have made a quietly desperate noise, nuzzling into the crook of his brother’s neck and returning the embrace tightly, but given the actuary didn’t react, Ram supposed he’d not heard. As the stats program dimmed the lights and shut the door, Ram breathed out with a steady sigh, and glanced at the beds.

Roy had taken the bed on the right side of the room, further from the door, and looked to be fast entering sleep mode; he hadn’t even crawled under the covers, merely flopped unceremoniously on top of them. Quietly, Ram padded over to the left-most bed, and reached up to pull the edge of the duvet down – and then paused, glancing over at Roy, then at the door, biting his lip hesitantly.

On the rare occasions they had both slept at the same time, Tron had always insisted on sleeping between Ram and any access point – the barracks doors, the compound gates, wherever there was the possibility of intrusion. Ram had let him; the need to protect and guard was in the security program’s nature.

There was nothing to fear here. There was no reason to want that protection; not with a User in the room and a very capable stats program on guard outside.

Ram tugged the blanket off the first bed anyways, and laid it over Roy’s shoulders, then curled up under the remaining length. With his back to the wall, the program nestled against his User’s side, too exhausted to fully appreciate the comfort of the mattress. Lulled by the rhythm of Roy’s breathing and the warmth of his presence, the infiltrator was asleep within minutes.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy, just about awake enough to figure out what Ram was doing, had no problem with this arrangement at all; he would have suggested it himself, but had thought Ram might prefer having his own space. Murmuring sleepily, he draped his arm over Ram's back and pulled him in closer, shutting his own outside permissions -- a necessary precaution against the programming equivalent of kicking in his sleep -- but sure he'd wake up, no matter what, if Ram needed him.


	8. Chapter 8

Ram slept.

And slept.

And continued to sleep. The combination of battle-fatigue and energy overcharge, the release of tension and the stress of his time on the decompiler, added to the internal tasklist of assimilating the last of Roy’s repairs, meant his systems had a lot to recover from. As it was, the clock on the wall marked the User-equivalent of almost 14 hours before the energy he’d absorbed was burned off to proper, safe levels, the final internal repairs completed, and Ram shifted from deep, healing hibernation to a more restful, lighter sleep mode.

The transition was marked; the program shifted in his sleep, nuzzling his face into the softness of the duvet underneath him, and made a quiet ‘ _whsfble’_ noise, before settling back down.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The time passed quietly, for the most part. Ram, after checking in on the sleepers for about the fifth time, opened up the console in the living room and forced himself to focus on his tracking scripts instead, adjusting variables to make it hold out for a little longer, though the system's power usage was rapidly growing too complex for it to be useful. A couple of hours later, tired but easier in his mind, he crept back into the guestroom and sat down at the edge of the bed, brushing a curl from his double's temple.  
  
He wasn't surprised when there was no response; deep hibernation, after what he knew and could guess about what Ram had been through, was normal and expected. Something in the sight pulled at his memories; he understood, as though it had been himself, why Ram wouldn't have wanted to be alone now.   
  
Sliding under the blanket, he curled up beside his brother, tucked his head against the back of Ram's neck and drifted off.  
  
Roy woke some hours later, blearily opening a small bright status window to check the time, and smiled to find his two programs nested together. The one with the headband made a small noise of protest, hiding his eyes, and Roy closed the light source and made himself relax, mulling over the specifics of the repairs he'd made until sleep claimed him again. It was far too early to wake up.  
  
He was, nonetheless, the first to rise again quite a while later; aside from the interruption, he'd gotten ten hours of relatively good sleep, and the difference was palpable. He checked on new-Ram's power levels first, found nothing to worry about, went through the morning's news updates in text-only on the console at the other side of the room, and only then left to tend to his own morning needs, returning about fifteen minutes later with Ram's (now-clean) armor and the disc he'd left in the refresher.  
  
Sitting down on one of the chairs, Roy activated the disc again, careful to access it in read mode only so as not to disturb Ram's sleep. The shutdown from yesterday still bothered him, and he wanted another look at its event log to see if he'd missed anything that might have contributed to it.  
  
He lost track of time studying the code, checking every file path down to its roots, while Ram's deep-sleep system checks ran in the background. When Ram shifted into a lighter sleep mode, his small motion and the accompanying status alert attracted the User's attention; but Ram was still asleep, and when Roy looked back at the disc, all he saw was a minimized note stating that his system scan was complete.  
  
Good -- that looked like progress. Puffing out a sigh of relief, Roy opened the scan log to check what it had done, not realizing, for the moment, that there was still another background process going on.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

It was an interesting challenge to read a disk that was still being actively used. Normally, it all went unseen, buried deep in the invisible realm of code and circuitry. As if sensing it had an audience, however, the code lines that hovered over the surface of Ram’s disk shifted and scrolled and swirled, like an old DOS boot-up adapted into a binary ballet. Small messages came and went quickly as subroutines and files were activated, checked, status-approved, and closed. Everything appeared green-lit.

It was easy enough for Roy to pull up the read-only files of the repair logs over the whole background process, though the shifting code was still a little distracting. But as Ram stirred from hibernation to sleep mode, a larger message displayed briefly, overlapping the words the User was intently scanning. [ _Systems scan complete. Now archiving temp.memory >> 0% complete_]

It was the program equivalent of dreaming. The temporary memory files gathered in-between hibernations were reviewed in the subconscious, tagged, and slotted into place in the more permanent data storage space, where only a User could access and delete them. It had been a very long time since Ram had been able to do this; there were a lot of files to go through, but slowly, the number began to tick slowly upwards.

The process worked backwards from the most recent to the last, and didn’t take precedence over what Roy was doing; the progress bar minimized itself to the background without being noticed by the distracted User, quietly working.

It was because of this that the problem wasn’t immediately detected. Rather, it was Ram who provided the incentive to check the status screen. The program had been sleeping peacefully until that point, but as the archival subroutine moved towards 3%, he shifted in his sleep, a light furrow of discomfort appearing between his eyebrows.

5%, and it grew more pronounced, hand curling into the fabric of the duvet.

7%, and he twisted in his sleep to lay more on his stomach, left hand moving up to fist a handful of tangled hair.

10%, and he shifting again to curl up in a ball against his brother, still clutching his head, and emitted a quietly distressed whimper-whine. Combined with the sudden restlessness, it was enough to wake his bedmate and alert the User sitting nearby that something might be wrong.

A quick check of the background-running subroutines revealed the status bar to be flashing orange, the alert for an important message requiring input. Pulling it back to the forefront of the display revealed a slowly expanding list of progress reports, followed by errors; one for each temporary file scanned, and all of them the same. [ _Memory file scanned: no viruses detected. Moving file to permanent storage. Error: file transfer incomplete; memory archive missing or corrupt. Delete temporary memory file?_ ]

Now at 12%, the error list had gotten big enough by now that the archival process had paused, and a second error warning had opened on top of it, as if sensing the User’s presence and demanding input. [ _Number of Files processed: 11216 out of 93472. Number of Files Archived: 0 out of 93472. Error: temp.file quarantine is full; delete all to continue // cancel process._ ]

“No,” Ram mumbled incoherently, half-whispered, half-whined, as his unconscious mind was trapped in a loop of the last memories to be scanned; a nightmare. “No, n- Tron…’scape…let’m’go…”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As luck had had it, the archive message had only shown up briefly, while Roy had been distracted by Ram's sleep transition. By the time he'd turned back to the code, it had minimized again, recallable if Roy had known about it -- but he didn't.  
  
He looked up again when Ram moved; the program's face was hidden against his pillow, and Roy wondered if he was waking. Or -- in the middle of a bad dream, if the new tension in his shoulders meant anything--  
  
\--the small pained sound cut to Roy's heart as it broke through the quiet. He was on his feet before he knew it, the disc cradled carefully with its access points still open. Ram's brother was waking too, levering himself up on one arm as Ram curled against him and shaking his shoulder gently, first concerned and then distressed as he realized Ram wasn't responding.  
  
Roy set the disc down on the night table so he'd have both hands free; the actuary had pulled Ram up against his shoulder, rocking him a little and murmuring comforting words into his hair, breaking off to say shakily, "He's not waking up, Roy." Ram was muttering something too, something about Tron and escaping that Roy only half caught as he leaned over the bed to check the program's power levels for himself. The other Ram's face, half seen over the infiltrator's curls, was drawn and hollow; his arms tightened around his brother's back.  
  
Ram whimpered and shook, the nightmare rolling on. There _was_ something off about his power levels, but Roy couldn't put his finger on it; the program was nowhere near derezzing, but something felt wrong. Tearing himself away, Roy crouched in front of the disc, expanding the readout to twice its resolution to see what was wrong for himself.  
  
And he found the memory alerts.  
  
He stared in shock, sorted the errors by date, by file size, looked up their paths, and felt a couple of unprintable words stick in his throat. _Another_ write error that shouldn't have been happening.....  
  
Then, tongue caught between his teeth, he cancelled the process and let all the memories shunt back, unsorted, to the temp file, where they'd be safe for a little longer. As for what the errors were beginning to suggest... he'd worry about them once Ram was stable again.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As Roy worked fervently to dispel the source of the problem, Ram was getting worse. The infiltrator’s breath quickened in distress as the dream memories escalated, right hand fisting a handful of blanket caught between him and his brother in a vice-like grip. The mumbled pleas grew more pronounced, anxious, Ram’s whole frame trembling, limbs shifting with the aborted motions of a dream-fogged fight. And as Roy located the error logs and cancelled the archive process, the program finally clawed his way free.

With a desperate cry, Tron’s name dying on his lips, Ram jolted awake. For a moment, the distraught program was wild-eyed and panicked, completely disorientated. But with his brother’s embrace holding him steady, and his User’s face staring worriedly at him across a disk display, it only took a few seconds for him to remember where he was.

Then the migraine that had been building slammed into him like a lightstaff to the head. It was the last straw for the program, already teetering on an emotional knifepoint; he clutched his head in a hand and buried his face against Ram’s chest, gasping for breath between ragged sobs. The steady litany of thought and emotion broadcasting through the close contact was jumbled and incoherent. / _dream-Tron-notreal-off-hurts-toobright-off-off-off--_

A quick dimming of the room lights, and a tweak to the open disk code to dull the headache to more manageable levels, and his sobs petered out to quiet, uneven breathing. It was a few minutes more before a miserable-looking Ram finally uncovered his face, looking thoroughly mortified by his miniature breakdown.

“Did I wake you guys up?” he mumbled tremulously, wrinkling his nose. “’m sorry.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The Grid's Ram shuddered at his brother's plaintive tone, smoothing a hand over his hair and looking desperately to where Roy was wrestling with the open code. It was surreal, comforting another version of himself like this; grounded and realistic as he was by nature, he'd only just come back online as well, and it was too easy to put himself in the other Ram's place.  
  
It got worse before it got better; the other Ram's struggle into wakefulness brought its own problems with it, and all Ram could do was steady him as lucidity crept into his eyes and then hold on again as the pain drove through him -- "Ram!" "Ram--" "--he says it's too bright--" _/notTron-he'sfine-he'llbeokay-justadream-Roy'sgonnahelp-holdon_ "I got it, hang on--" "--it's okay, we gotcha--" _/Igotcha-Ram-shh-comfort- **breathe** \--_  
  
There was something intuitive, Roy would reflect later, about working with Ram's code. He found his way to the new problem almost instinctively, increasing the space allocated to Ram's temp file and a running a surface defrag in his permanent storage to clean up after the errors. As it worked, and Ram's sobs petered out, he left the open disc where it was and sat down on the bed to be nearer the two. "..Ram, how is it now... Ram?"  
  
At the program's tentative response, he couldn't stop himself from reaching over and brushing some of the wetness from Ram's face. There was nothing to be sorry about, no reason for him to be ashamed after what he'd been through. "No, it's okay," he said gently; "I've been up for hours." He barely sensed the other Ram's ping as it transferred ( _~Just a little. 's okay, I'm here, right?~_ ) and quirked an eyebrow at him, more in affection than any real feeling about being left out of the dialog. The actuary only shifted to get a little more comfortable, his arms still tight around his shaken brother.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram hiccupped quietly and nestled closer to his brother, still trembling slightly as he closed his eyes and just breathed, a hand still tangled in his curls as if to ward off a resurgence of the now dwindling headache. For a moment it looked like he was going to go back to sleep, only to twitch and force his eyes open again, looking far too spooked by his nightmares to want to try. Gingerly, he loosened his right hand, flexing the stiffness out of his fingers, and wiped the rest of the discharged tears from his cheeks.

“M’ head hurts,” he finally answered Roy, and his voice held a pleading, frightened note. “Wha’s happening t’me? I was fine before.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As Ram huddled closer, the other Ram rubbed his back, carefully smoothing the lines of tension around the trembling program's neck and shoulders. He too looked to Roy for an answer, but only briefly; his brother needed him more now.  
  
Roy bit his lip, leaning on one arm so he could see Ram's face. "I think I've got a clue now," he said, a bit hesitant himself. The technical terms might not mean anything to Ram -- just because Ram was a program didn't mean he knew all the details of how his own processes worked, any more than Roy could have flipped to a random page in a medical textbook and understood all the jargon just because it was about other humans. But at least he could explain a little.  
  
"What's happening is that you're having a memory problem -- your temp files aren't backing up when you sleep and it's causing errors and processing loops, and probably clogging up your free space in the bargain. As for the reason why, I'm still working on that. The errors come up when your memory tries to write to permanent storage; it's like you're stuck in read-only." His brows drew together in sympathy. "I can put together some temporary fixes to hold it off for a while, but your memories have to go somewhere eventually."  
  
He hitched himself closer, wrapping an arm around the actuary's back and taking Ram's hand with his own free one. He still needed to fix the scar too, glitch it. Why did all this have to happen?  
  
"Ram, if it's okay with you, I want to back up your memories, just in case. We don't have to do that this minute, though; you still look like you need a lot more sleep."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram appeared to be listening as intently as possible, though it was clear his attention span was flagging; his eyes kept drooping, lulled towards a state of calm that came with hearing Roy’s voice. Each time they threatened to close completely, though, he forced them open, the turmoil briefly clearer.

He understood enough of the explanation to nod quietly in agreement to the idea of temporary fixes, relaxing against his brother as he met Roy’s sympathetic gaze, but when Roy drew closer, he shifted to lean more against the User, snuggling under his arm. His fingers twitched restlessly against Roy’s palm, a slight hitch in his air circulators belaying a measure of anxiety.

He was still nodding in agreement when Roy mentioned further sleep.

“No!” The refusal was reflexive, the infiltrator jerking slightly, eyes flying open wide in alarm. “No more sleep; there’s too much to process, I…whenever I close my eyes, I see...” he shivered slightly, clinging to Roy, and shook his head. “I don’t want to sleep anymore.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Yeah, Ram could definitely use more sleep. Roy shifted to accommodate him, and the other Ram leaned tiredly against his shoulder, the two supporting the exhausted program between them.   
  
"Not gonna happen," Roy assured him gently. "I put a temporary hold on your automatic backups to stop the errors; it'll also stop you from dreaming for a while. Anything that's in there, you'll only be able to access on purpose, while you're awake."  
  
He was as sure as he could be that there were no more unwelcome surprises waiting -- that he'd isolated all the processes that the errors could affect. Barring automatic processes from Ram's permanent memory ought to stop flashbacks just as well as dreams, too. There'd been so _many_ memories, and probably most of them bad... it was no wonder Ram was so scared to let them take hold.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The nervous whine Ram made was the sort that tied funny knots in a person’s chest. But Roy’s words of reassurance seemed to do the trick; he was fighting the attempted sleep-mode activation protocols less. His eyes drifted shut a few more times, fluttering open occasionally with a glassy, exhausted blankness.

He couldn’t stopgap the protocols any longer; his systems still demanded further rest. Cautiously, he untangled himself from the intertwined ball of relatives enough to ease back down onto the bed properly. He curled up, an arm crooked to pillow his head, and shivered involuntarily.

“H’pe…hope you’re right,” he mumbled, almost unintelligibly, as he yawned and let his eyes shut for the last time, circuitry dimming into a low-power state of sleep mode.


	9. Chapter 9

Roy ran his fingers through Ram's hair in the same comforting, hypnotic motion that had worked so well on Sam back when he was little. The other Ram tucked himself next to his brother again, relaxing into near-sleep himself as Ram's breath evened out.  
  
"Took the day off," he murmured, at Roy's curious look. It had been pretty obvious that acclimating his new brother would take more than a couple of explanations and a good night's sleep. Despite their losses, Stats wasn't shorthanded; anyone who knew him would easily be able to guess where he was, and for today, at least, there was nothing else demanding his attention, nowhere else he needed to be.  
  
He looked up at their User, dropping his voice to a near-whisper, his eyes entreating. "You are right, aren't you?"  
  
"I hope so," said Roy quietly. "There's some stuff in his logs I wish I could talk to Lora about. Maybe I'll be able to get a ping through while he's sleeping. But he should be all right for now."  
  
The words were enough. Ram, the ghost of a thankful smile smoothing his features, nodded and drifted off too, and Roy, after waiting a few minutes to make sure they were both okay, let out a shaken sigh as he stood.  
  
The infiltrator's disc was still open on the nightstand, its processes quietly ticking along around the now-untouchable areas that had triggered the errors. Roy twisted around, feeling his spine crick and pop, and then dragged his armchair closer to the bed and flopped into it to resume his analysis.  
  
There was still plenty of analysis to go. It was a good thing he was wide awake.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

To the relief of all of them, Ram rested another 6 hours without incident. Without the build-up of errors clogging his neural circuits, he slept quite peacefully, a quiet purr from his air circulators cycling in and out of audible hearing. With more energy in his reserves, he may have remained asleep even longer, but the processes of travel, repair, and the strain of the nightmares and flashbacks had burned away all the remaining excess from his impromptu swim, and began to deplete his normal reserves at last.

A minor low-power alert was what caused him to stir later in the day. Ram shifted, uncurling and rolling onto his back, with a quiet noise as he stretched stiffness from his limbs, and opened his eyes. The room light was still dim, though a brief check of his internal chronometers told him it was probably closer to the middle of the microcycle. The actuary had stayed with him, still dozing against his shoulder; it was a soothing, warm weight that threatened to lull the infiltrator back into sleep.

The bed itself didn’t help that matter. Ram hadn’t been alert enough, or in a proper state of mind, to appreciate it earlier, but the blankets and soft padding that held him were both _superbly_ comfortable. Selfishly, he could’ve laid there for the next hex of microcycles. But there was that notice flashing in the corner of his eye, alerting him to his more pressing needs, and he groaned at it in protest, covering his eyes with an arm. “Go awayyyyyy…”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The room wasn't completely quiet during those six hours. Ram-the-actuary had gotten up to recharge an hour or so in, and brought a file of actuarial tables (a present from Roy's timeline) back to the guest room with him, along with some energy for Roy. He'd also unshielded the picture window occupying almost the entire wall opposite the door; still safely opaque from the outside, the window let in a pretty view of some of the downtown districts. Seeing his brother still asleep, he'd settled in beside him to calculate for a couple of hours and eventually dozed off again, the file hex closing as it dropped to the floor.  
  
Roy, glancing up, had touched the wall beside his chair, sending a signal that dimmed the window almost -- but not quite -- back to opacity; he too felt better with the view out there.  
  
Since sending his ping to Lora, detailing what he'd found in Ram's code and what he suspected it meant, he hadn't moved from his chair except to take a couple of incoming pings in the other room. As yet, nobody outside Security knew of the new program's arrival, but they (as Ram had worriedly mentioned in his quick debrief the other day) had been swamped with work since the bombings; it wouldn't be surprising if there were no visitors today. He didn't think the infiltrator would be up to it anyway, though exceptions might be made for the Trons if they weren't all thoroughly booked.  
  
Lora's return ping had come about four hours in; she had, very fortunately, been at her terminal when his message had gone through. Bringing the data-hex back to the guestroom, Roy checked and rechecked it against what he'd learned from Ram's disc, and looked over at his sleeping programs in concern.  
  
Then he'd spent the next two hours painstakingly picking out and nullifying the destructive code that had left the scar in Ram's hand.  
  
At least that was one thing he could do.  
  
  
When Ram stirred, his brother blinked awake too, stretching all the way down to his toes before flopping back against Ram's shoulder and murmuring teasingly, "Sure y'don't wanna sleep some more?"  
  
Roy, for his part, watched Ram's processes blink back to life in his disc, making sure nothing unexpected was going to hit. Ram's power levels were down, but he looked pretty good. Finally satisfied, he set the disc aside and smiled. "G'morning, sunshine."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram felt, rather than watched, his brother stretch out and flop back down against him. He made a disgusted, amused noise from underneath his arm, muttering. “Ugh; don’t tempt me, Ar-Zee, I just might.”

Roy’s greeting, while friendly, was close enough to slightly startle the infiltrator; he hadn’t expected the User would still be there, let alone sitting so close. The human sounded amused, which meant he’d probably overheard what Ram had muttered. Ram shifted his arm off his face and cocked an eyebrow.

“Good…uh…morning.” His gaze was drawn almost immediately to the familiar rings of his identity disk, set aside on the arm of Roy’s chair. “There weren’t any more problems, were there?” Ram couldn’t remember having any dreams, but that didn’t mean all systems had functioned properly. Still, Roy seemed to be in good spirits; Ram took that to be a positive sign. Then he frowned slightly.

“Were you sitting there the entire time?” he wondered aloud, sending a dubious glance at the chair; it didn’t look all that comfortable, to him. “Users sure are patient.”

His circuits must’ve still had shorts in them; he hadn’t meant to mutter that out loud. Rolling his eyes at himself and the quiet noises of mirth his brother was making, the infiltrator struggled to sit up, propped up by his elbows, and scrubbed fingers through his tangled hair with a weary grunt.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

At the nickname, the actuary collapsed into his pillow in a fit of giggles, blindly reaching over to clap Ram on the shoulder and ping _~Don't even start,_ Sunshine _, oh who am I kidding, go right ahead. Sleep well?~ /cozy-warm-better?_  
  
"Not the _whole_ time," teased Roy; "I got up and did a few somersaults and ran a marathon or two. Don't worry about me; back in my world 90% of programming is about sitting there and staring at the screen.~" With the other 10% involving running around like a maniac trying to figure out why the network had gone down _this time_. "You're all-systems-go," he added more seriously, "except the stuff I put a hold on, which is sort of urgent, but you'll have to power up before we do anything about it, so what do you say to some breakfast?"  
  
He pulled himself out of the chair (which was actually pretty darned comfortable, if he did say so himself) and propped his hip up on the night table as Ram adjusted to being awake. He had a couple of surprises for the infiltrator, too. While waiting for Lora's ping, he'd added a number of improvements to his overall configuration, uncompiled as yet but ready for Ram's approval: stronger armor in the lighter, more comfortable Free Grid style; an expandable map of the system that could be projected on any surface, no hardware required; and a couple of cached weapon functions, likewise internally coded so they could be stored or enabled without requiring a baton. He'd also added some tweaks to Ram's base code that would make him more physically durable without sacrificing speed or agility. With those, he hadn't waited for permission; they were an immune-system boost, not something that would change what made Ram _himself_.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

/ _warm-snug-muchbetter,_ Ram responded, sitting up fully as he worked through the last of his boot-up protocols and yawned. Then the nickname filtered through his processors and he paused, glancing down at his brother. ~ _Sunshine?~_ That didn’t even make sense as a nickname. He wasn’t even sure what ‘sunshine’ was – but it seemed to be causing his brother a great deal of amusement.

And now Roy was teasing him. At least, Ram thought so; it was a little hard to tell this early after booting. Something about summer salts and programs? Wait, back up a picocyke.

He blinked, nonplussed for a moment, and tried to imagine sitting still. For 90% of a runtime. Doing nothing but stare at data on a screen. It was a vaguely horrifying thought; his processors itched to get up and move at the very idea. He gave a mock-shudder, staring at Roy in amazement. “You sure you’re my User?” he asked, only half-teasing, “You sound way too sedate.”

Which set his brother off in a new fit of mirth, thoroughly distracting Ram from Roy’s suggestion of breakfast before codework and the urgency of the situation.

Deftly, the infiltrator reached back, snagged a free pillow, and smooshed it down on Ram’s head with a smirk. “It’s not that funny, _Arzee_.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

At the question, Ram blinked and sat up eagerly, pinging over a jumbled rush of _/heat-light-bliss ~I got to see it on the way to rescue Flynn in Roy's timeline, it was EVERYWHERE.~_ Not too hard to figure out why a User would pick the word for a nickname, really.  
  
"Didn't I say don't worry?" grinned Roy. "In my offscreen life, I'm a ninja." Now more than ever, what with two Grids and _lightjets_ and the work he was doing to prepare Flynn Lives for when Flynn was up to returning to the User world. And it wasn't as if coding was nothing, either, especially with what he knew now.  
  
"Hey, ZackAttack," interjected Ram, still snickering, "he's calling me RZ. How come he gets the cool callsi--" His brother's pillow cut the words off, and he let out a muffled yelp, grabbing the next nearest pillow and flailing blindly with it.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram had just enough time to parse out the ping-data that was ‘ _sunlight’_ and preen about it – being nicknamed after something that important was much better than a few bits of binary lettering – before his smug smirk was wiped off with a pillow he barely managed to duck. It still whacked him upside the head on its return trip, knocking him off-balance.  
  
“Maybe because I’m cooler than you,” he shot back with a grin, grabbing the offending weapon from his brother and chucking it off the foot of the bed, then grappling for control of the original.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

It all happened so fast that Roy only had time to stare. Ram, deprived of his weapon, crowed, "Oh yeah? Bring it!" and ducked under the pillow to tickle the infiltrator's sides. One attack deserved another, right?

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Bring it_. The words and actions were a flashback to better times in the compound with Tron, finding little moments of amusement in between matches. Only this time, he didn’t have armour to dampen the tactile input, and the fabric of the loose sleep-wear was flimsy in comparison. He didn’t stand a chance.

It spurred an instant reaction; Ram shrieked, squirming desperately away from the probing fingers until he all but fell off the bed. There was a brief scramble to avoid doing so, as he wormed his way free and back towards the safety of the middle of the mattress, but the tickle-attack only resumed once he’d gained solid ground, and he was soon breathless, laughing hysterically.

“Augh! Ahahahaha-ack! He-eeelp! Uncle! Uncle, Tron, I give! I g-ahaha-stop!”

The attack immediately ceased, the merciless fingers removed. Ram lay there, air circulators cycling rapidly, chest heaving for breath, still giggling from time to time, as he came down from the high energy-burn. Then his mind cleared enough to remember what he’d said, and who he was with, and the smile faded slightly from his face.

Well. That was a mood-killer.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram hadn't expected his brother to be that sensitive, and toned down the tickling pretty quickly, pausing only to make sure they didn't both end up on the floor. He faltered, though, at the unexpected name -- the last thing he'd wanted to do was trigger another flashback.  
  
"Tron, huh," he said, with a small understanding smile. That had to be another way his double's past differed from his own. In the memories he'd inherited, he and Tron had both been in solitary from the get-go; there'd been no freedom or leisure for horseplay.  
  
Swallowing a sudden lump in his throat, he slid his arm under Ram's shoulders to help him sit up. Part of him wanted to start hauling the infiltrator around to meet all the Trons on the Grid, but if none of them turned out to be the one Ram was so concerned about, they'd just be back to square one.  
  
The sudden mood change been a scare for Roy, too, but at least this time it didn't come with agony and error messages. The User, who'd only just reached them when the tickle-war abruptly stopped, sighed and held out his hands, one for each program.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Still a bit winded, Ram swallowed the bitter feeling in his throat and gave his brother a cocky smile. “Well, it’s a better nickname than R-Z,” he offered, acting as though he’d intended to yell the name the entire time, though his words sounded a bit weak in his own auditory sensors. He accepted the hug, and then glanced up, finding Roy standing over them with a concerned look.

“I’m fine,” the infiltrator promised, grabbing the User’s hand and letting Roy haul him to his feet, sliding off the bed. And he was; the only error message flashing at him from the corner of his vision was a warning that their little tussle had depleted more of his energy reserves. “Just lost myself for a picocycle.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

He wasn't fooling anybody. Ram could remember the same uncertainty after 200 microcycles in Sark's not-so-tender care, but Tron had still been with him then; from what he'd heard from Roy, the days after the reintegration, when everything had changed but he still hadn't known who'd survived, were a closer parallel to what his brother was going through now.  
  
"Aw," he said, his arm steady around the other Ram's shoulders, "but I was just starting to like that."  
  
Roy, pulling them both to their feet, tried his best to put his concern aside. He'd had far too many opportunities over the years to watch loss and uncertainty take hold in the people he cared about; it was unbearable, sometimes, knowing how little he could really do. Like right now -- he couldn't magically save Tron, couldn't even promise anything. But he _could_ nod and pull Ram into a long hug of his own -- could at least be there to ground and reassure him as much as possible.  
  
"Welcome back," he said softly. "C'mon, let's get you charged up."


	10. Chapter 10

Ram smirked at his brother half-heartedly, understanding the sentiment, before he was enveloped in Roy’s arms in one of the User’s warm, emotive-radiant hug he was starting to get accustomed to. He made a noise against his User’s shoulder, squished into the hug as he was, that was half-agreement and half-unwillingness to leave the comforting embrace.

Hunger won out over insecurity. He tugged himself free with reluctance, and followed the User out into the main area. “More popcorn?” He still remembered the snack’s flavour well, and while it was tasty, it didn’t seem like something he wanted for a first ration of energy after such a long hibernation. But it seemed like Roy and Ram had other ideas. Coached to take a seat and let the more experienced cooks handle the kitchen, the infiltrator claimed a seat at the table, sitting on it backwards to fold his arms across the backrest and rest his chin as he watched them bustle about.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Among other things," Roy laughed. Ram's need for contact was far from unwelcome; he and Roy had an entire lifetime apart to make up for, and hugs were important. But so was powering up, especially with the work that loomed ahead of them all.  
  
Solid energy wasn't unknown on the Grid, but the shapes and textures of User food could be an acquired taste, so Roy left the orange juice green and the Wheatina (mostly) translucent, with just a swirl of white to speed absorption and boost efficiency. There was, of course, more popcorn (he still hadn't gotten used to having an unlimited supply), but it was entirely optional. Bowls and cups were, fortunately, a concept common to both worlds; there'd be no need to scoop up energy with a disc here.  
  
The kitchen setup wasn't entirely the same to the User-world type, though. There were some quirks geared directly to programs' preferences, like the series of taps running down the center of the table.  
  
Ram-the-actuary whispered something in Roy's ear -- an idea for later -- and went to code the taps for his own favorite admixture. It was pale blue, with tiny crystals, and shimmered with the slightest movement, and when the center of the table dipped in to form a wide fountain-dish that filled swiftly with the glowing liquid, he had to cast a hopeful grin at his brother, eager to see his reaction to the display.  
  
There was plenty of room along the table's sides, and that was where Roy placed the various glasses (some empty, some green) and bowls as he rejoined the two programs. He'd had a hasty breakfast earlier, and was content now with a little portion of the warm cereal-equivalent.  
  
"You can have as much or little as you like," he said, handing each Ram a spoon and dipping his small cup in the blue table-moat. "This stuff should be good for you, but take your time so you can get used to it."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram was wiping something out of his eye with the heel of his palm when his brother looked over at him. He had watched in wonder as a veritable banquet was formed on the table before him. In actuality, there wasn’t that much, but it looked like a feast for a program who’d been running on polluted rations for the better part of a centicycle.

The awesome display as the table reformed to cradle the specialised cocktails was the last he’d been able to process. Ram’s emotive processors were still a bit fragile; he hadn’t been able to stop the welling-up of discharge at the corners of his eyes. Upon realising he was under scrutiny, he dropped his hand hastily and returned the grin lopsidedly, hoping he’d cleared out all of the glimmering liquid. He’d cried enough for one microcycle over more important things; he wasn’t going to lose it over a little thing like breakfast.

“Looks good,” he said after he’d turned his chair the right way around, taking his spoon from Roy and pulling the bowl of solid-state energy in front of him closer. It was semi-fluid and slightly lumpy, and was just this side of translucent. Frankly, it looked vaguely dubious – but then again, so had the popcorn. Feeling a little self-conscious, Ram poked at it with his spoon, before giving it a taste.

Unlike the popcorn, the bowl’s contents didn’t have much going for it. The tang of the energy was muted, probably a by-product of the transformation from liquid to its semi-solid cereal state. Ram considered the flavour for a moment before swallowing: bland, mildly savoury with a hint of sweetness. Sure, it did the trick – he could feel his systems respond immediately to the mixture, energy reserves reacting favourably to the added absorption and efficiency boosters – but otherwise, it wasn’t that memorable.

He abruptly decided he’d rather try the admixture his brother had poured instead. That, at least, was recognisable (and probably tasted a lot better, considering it was Ram who’d coded it.) He leaned forward to dip his cup in, scooping up a number of floating crystals, and swiped a finger up the side of the glass to clean up the lingering trail of liquid, sticking it in his mouth afterwards.

“Hmm,” he hummed appreciatively, taking a proper sip of the energy mix. That was more like it.

He settled in to enjoy the rest of the glass, occasionally poking at his cereal without actually consuming more of it, and listened to Ram and Roy chat idly over their own meals. At least, until a thought occurred to him, and he paused, eying his half-empty glass and the bowl of warm cereal thoughtfully.

With a slightly devious expression, he poured a little of the admixture into the cereal, and took an experimental bite.

Oh yes; _vast_ improvement.

He was busy pouring the rest of the glass into the bowl in increments as so to form the perfect balance of liquid energy and semi-solid cereal when he realised he was being stared at. He paused, and glanced up at his companions’ bemused expressions.

“...What?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The other Ram had dug right in, not minding the blandness; Roy'd had plenty of time to impress him with interesting food in the past. If he'd wondered about this particular choice, he would have shrugged and figured their User had a reason, and he would have been right: the compound was supposed to be easy to absorb, just in case the infiltrator had any lingering issues from his long stint on short rations. Hopefully, though, there wouldn't be an issue, and Roy had been confident enough about that not to stop the actuary from coding a more potent mix or to prevent the new program from trying it.  
  
The User didn't want to hound Ram with a bunch of questions, like whether it tasted okay or how he felt or if there was anything else he wanted, so once he could see that the stuff wasn't distasteful, he left him to it. Not that he wasn't watching -- after yesterday's scares, he was on the lookout for any sign of trouble, but Ram just seemed to be taking his time with the food, and there were all kinds of reasons why he might be doing that.  
  
Pushing his seat back so he could stretch out his legs, Roy turned for a moment to answer a question from Ram's brother. There was plenty to talk about, even without touching on the work that would be needed here after the attacks. The rebuilding back in his own Grid was going well; it was thought that Flynn, far closer to recovery from the slow breakdown that had started long before Clu's rebellion, might be ready to check back into the User world soon, though the company would remain in Alan's hands until he was fit to take the wheel again. And then there was Lora's hard-fought, secret battle to declassify the phase of Gibbs's research that had led to the laser project's abandonment back in the eighties, and the antics of eleven-year-old Sam, visiting the Grid every day after school... but Ram was looking distracted now, blinking past Roy at his double, and when Roy looked, he had to suppress a double-take too.  
  
Apparently the safe, mild formula hadn't been as appealing as he'd thought.  
  
An equally devious smirk flicked across the actuary's face, and he promptly trickled some of the blue stuff into his own bowl. Yup. That _was_ better.  
  
"Nothing," groaned Roy, with a mock eyeroll. "What am I gonna do with you two?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The response from the infiltrator was a quirked eyebrow as he sucked his spoon clean, all innocence. It really did taste better with the blue mixed in, although Ram still took his time with each spoonful. The added kick the admix provided when combined with the absorption boosters meant it was still a bit richer than he was used to. But he didn’t care; to the starved program, it was ambrosia.

(He made a mental note to look up what ambrosia was later. His language dictionaries spat the strangest stuff at him sometimes.)

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, since there was a lull in conversation, licking a drip of stray energy off his finger. “You said you wanted to back up my memory files?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy nodded, hiking one foot up to prop it on his knee. "Like I said, you have a write error. When you dream, your memories are trying to sort themselves into permanent storage, but since they can't, they're getting backed up... and you've experienced for yourself what that does. I haven't managed to pin down the fault yet," he added with regret, "but I did send an analysis to a User in my world and got a reply back while you were asleep."  
  
The actuary leaned over at that, catching his User's eye. "Lora, right?" Roy confirmed it, and Ram brightened, leaning further to stage-whisper towards his brother: "Yori's User!" If the Tron in the infiltrator's world had been anything like the Tron Ram had known, Yori's name would definitely ring a couple of bells.  
  
And also, Lora was... well. Ram had met her when they'd stormed the Grid in Roy's world. If she was on the case, he figured, his brother was as good as cured.  
  
"Yeah," Roy laughed. "She and I go way back. Anyway, she made a couple of suggestions I'd like to look into. But first I want to back up your temp memories for two reasons -- one, I'll feel better when you've got it in permanent storage _somewhere_ , and two, so this whole bad sleep cycle thing doesn't have to happen again."  
  
He spread his hands, reached over with a smile, and knocked lightly on the crown of Ram's head. "Hopefully it'll just be a temporary measure until we get you running on all cylinders again. What do you think?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram paused midway through shovelling another spoonful of cereal into his mouth to regard first his brother, then his User, with a wide-eyed look of wonder. Yori was certainly a _familiar_ name; goodness knows he’d heard Tron utter it wistfully in the downtimes on several occasions, staring up at the transmission auroras that occasionally glimmered above the compound. Of course, all Ram had ever been able to learn was that Yori was Tron’s mate, and smelled like oranges – whatever those were.

The compound wasn’t exactly a friendly place to mention ties one left behind in the outer system.

Despite this, Tron had always said Yori’s name with warmth and longing, and Ram had the feeling Yori was a program he would’ve liked to meet. So if her User was anything like the program, then his brother probably had reason to be excited that Roy had consulted this Lora to help.

Ram nodded in understanding and acceptance of the User’s explanation and grinned slightly around his spood, letting his head rock away from Roy’s gentle knuckle-tap with eyes half-shut.

“I think it’s a good plan,” he said after swallowing the mouthful of food a little too quickly in his haste to answer and wincing at the brief, strange sensation. “I’ve never met Yori – don’t really know much about her, really, Tron’s not that talkative, but then the compound isn’t the best place for that sort of open discussion – but I’d like to see what User-Lora calculated. Any User who could code a program that could keep up with Tron has got to be brilliant.” He smirked slightly at the laughter that generated. “I’ve just got one question.”

He paused, propping his elbow on the table, and a look of long-suffered bemusement crossed his face. “What the fault’s an _orange_?” And of course, that non-sequitur required further input. “It has been bugging me for cycles and I have no idea why Tron says Yori smells like them but apparently it’s the best thing since refined energy, if his code-smitten face is anything to go by.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"He didn't tell me much about her either," said the actuary, with a reminiscent smile. There was a touch of wistfulness behind his words, too, for questions unanswered and chances lost. So many Trons on the Grid, and only one of the very few Yoris who had arrived had actually found the one she remembered.... But some of them _had_ arrived, and that was better than nothing. "There are a couple versions of her here, though. I can introduce you when you're up to exploring a little."  
  
Roy was finishing the last of his cereal, eager to set to now that a plan had been made. He licked a final bite off his spoon and nearly choked on it in amusement at the infiltrator's question, looking incredulously from one Ram to the other to see if _both_ Trons had -- yes, from the older Ram's expression, his own Tron had mentioned that little detail too.  
  
"There's a story behind that, I can tell," he grinned. "Take your time finishing your power-up, guys. I want to hear this."  
  
Still chuckling, he slipped his bowl into the recycler under the counter, leaned back, and left the actuary, who had once spent half a millicycle collecting the weird round objects for Yori when a Portal glitch had rained them all over Tron City, to explain what oranges were.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Oranges_ turned out to be a kind of fragrant User-world fruit in the genus classification ‘Citrus’, being the most well-known product of that genus, with flavourful juicy meat that was midway between sweet and tart, protected by a bitter-tasting, oily rind. It required a bit more explanation as to what a ‘fruit’ was in the first place before Ram could wrap his head around the concept. Plants, it was clarified, were like data-growth; they grew and sprouted flowers, like crystals, which sometimes then formed fruits, which were like edible bits, meant to spread the plant’s data in order to grow new plants.

Well, Ram gathered it was a little more complicated than that, but he was too busy being mildly disturbed at the idea of eating something Bit-equivalent. He felt a tad better about it once it was clarified that fruit wasn’t sentient like Bits were, and was actually meant to be eaten, because that was how the plant data got spread. Fruit couldn’t get up and fly off like Bits could.

This was logical, he decided, and rather ingenious of whomever had designed the plants.

But it was still weird.

Circuits pulsing gently indigo in mild embarrassment, Ram busied himself with shovelling cereal in his mouth in an effort to stop his increasing habit of putting his foot there instead. Maybe if he kept eating, he could let his newfound family talk and just learn by osmosis.

His optimism about this plan lasted for the next few spoonfuls, until the infiltrator’s energy systems decided to remind him he’d been on rancid rations for the past innumerable cycles and didn’t know what to do with the healthier admixtures anymore. He didn’t get more than a couple of bites in before the rich energy and specialised absorption code stopped tasting fantastic and started to make his reservoirs churn in warning. With a sigh of defeat, and trying not to display the onset of nausea on his face, Ram put the spoon down and pushed his bowl away, the receptacle a little less than half-full.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram-the-actuary turned out to know more about oranges than Roy had expected, so he'd kept his attention on his other guest as the talk moved forward, pausing only to interject a clarification or two.  
  
The infiltrator's shy confusion made him smile sadly -- here was proof positive that he himself _had_ once been that young. Maybe Ram would grow more confident with time and experience, or maybe he'd need some kind of training or code-tweak to free him to be more comfortable with himself; hey, humans sometimes needed some outside help too. Two decades of Roy's ENCOM friends had done wonders for him, and if Ram at compilation had been an imprint of his User's strengths and flaws and impulses, he was his own person now, free to flourish and change as he liked.  
  
When it became clear that the blue admixture had been a little too rich after all, Roy quietly reached over to the tap and coded a shot of energy-distribution variables, which manifested as a clear liquid that shimmered a little as it poured into a glass. He handed it to Ram with an encouraging smile, and stood to fetch a datapad from a shelf so the infiltrator could settle his processes in peace.


	11. Chapter 11

Evidently, Ram wasn’t as good at hiding his discomfort as he thought – or maybe it was just the User’s perceptive nature at work, as Roy leaned forward to code something new into the table’s tap, then passed a glass of the new mixture across without comment, an encouraging smile on his face. Ram smiled gratefully back; the clear energy was weak, and almost tasteless, but the simpler variables in the mix settled his reserves a bit and topped off his requirements without triggering a rejection.

He nursed the glass for a little while, letting the gentler energy do its work. The glass was roughly half-gone when a flat data tablet hovered into view on the edge of his downturned gaze. Bemused, Ram looked up and blinked to find Roy holding the other end of the device. His User looked expectant, obviously waiting for Ram to take the pad from him. Curiosity aroused, the program set aside the glass and took the tablet, quietly pouring over the technology in his hands. The device was megacycles more advanced than he was used to, although a quick tutorial allowed him to grasp the basics of its workings, and of its purpose: Roy wanted to use this tablet to back up his memories.

This was a marvel for Ram, who in his time had never known a data storage device with enough memory to do such a thing, let alone one that fit in his hands so easily. Yet aside from the wicked-fast transfer rate counter in the corner of the screen, and the impossible amount of space on the tablet’s memory card, data transmission hadn’t changed much since Ram’s timeline. The subroutine on the tablet screen was simple enough. Transmitting his memory files to the pad would be quick and easy with this method, and hopefully avoid any messy flashbacks that another method might trigger. Emboldened, Ram took a sip of the clear, and lined his fingers up with the ports on the side as directed, closing his eyes for concentration while Roy and his brother observed watchfully.

The initial link was a tug, a gentle connectivity, and he could feel his systems partitioning the contents of his temp files, prepping them for the relocation. On the edge of his senses, he could feel his disk’s display activate, as Roy carefully followed the process on the HUD, making sure nothing faulted and went wrong. The process worked backwards, as always, archiving the more recent memories first; images of the time he’d spent here, short as it was, flashed across the back of Ram’s eyelids and made him smile slightly.

Then it reached his earlier cache, and almost immediately the pressure behind his eyes began to build, as the same write-error as before began flashing on the disk readout with every file scanned. [ _Cannot transfer data; original file missing or corrupt._ ]

With a flinch and a gasp, Ram force-quit the process and pulled out of the link-up, pain already stabbing at the back of his mental processors.

“No good,” he rasped with a grimace, closing his eyes to pinch the bridge of his nose and emitting a frustrated whine as the ache receded. “It’s not – I can access the files, but it’s...it’s like I’m remembering that I’m _remembering_ them, not actually remembering _them_. ...Does that make any sense?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"Whoa. Stop, hold still--" Roy had sat up straighter when the errors started, quickly expanding the faulty process and sorting the stranded files back into temp. When the error was resolved as best as could be done on the disc, he closed the display and leaned over to Ram -- User sentiment, perhaps objectively silly when the disc could tell him all he needed to know, but he couldn't just sit and stare at the Ram's code when the program himself was sitting right there with that look on his face.  
  
"Yeah," he said, frowning, "it makes sense. The files are reading as there but they're acting like broken shortcuts when you try to do anything with them. I'm starting to think that even if I tried to copy them over myself, straight from your disc, the same thing would happen."  
  
He tilted the pad in Ram's hand so he could see it. No problems right up until the program had rezzed in the other day, but after that.... a big blank. Huffing out a frustrated breath, he rubbed his chin again and switched his hand to Ram's shoulder, just above the disc dock.  
  
Ram-the-actuary had also leaned in, worried, though there was nothing he could actually _do_ but send over a series of soothing pings, adding at the end, ~ _Are you okay? We can leave this for later if you want.~_  
  
"There is one thing," said Roy thoughtfully, thumbing down the string of error messages that had copied over to the pad before the transfer had stopped. "You _are_ remembering the content, so that means your active memory does have access. I might be able to copy them from there, and then the copies shouldn't have all these problems and hopefully you'll be able to just store them normally. But you'll have to remember them one by one." He looked back up at Ram, taking in the tired eyes and the pain lingering in the lines of his face. "If you want, we can stop for now and try this again when you're ready?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s gaze shied away from Roy’s concerned frown, only to be met with his brother program’s equally worried stare and a gentle brush of ping-binary querying his status. Not gentle enough for his headache; Ram concealed his wince to a marginal twitch around the corners of his eyes and tried a reassuring smile to sooth their fretful attention.

“Well that’s just glitched,” he muttered, as Roy diagnosed the problem, folding his arms over his chest and hugging himself, shoulders shrugged tightly inward. “So much for the archival idea.” He snorted softly, discomfort spurring sarcasm. “What’m I supposed to do, go around with headaches and a chunk of missing memories for the rest of my runtime?”

Yet how many times had Ram wished he could just forget everything that had ever happened since his internment in the Compound? Now he had the opportunity – and the thought of losing it all scared the infiltrator to permanent deletion. There was more than pain and fear in those files; there was friendship, and skill, and knowledge he never would’ve gained otherwise, and the memory of all the programs he had derezzed. There was Tron. To forget all that…a shudder passed through Ram’s extremities, largely contained by his hunched, curled-in posture. No. Just letting Roy clear the temp files from his memory and starting over wasn’t an option.

What Roy was suggesting as an alternative, however, made Ram recoil as cold dread sank into his functions.

“No,” he gasped, fighting the urge to get up, put distance between him and his family because Roy wanted him to _relive that,_ wanted him to remember all that horror and pain and _grief_ , and although the sensible part of Ram’s code knew it was logical, and sound, and the best option to preserve the files that were at risk of erasure…there was a part of his base code that was deeply, irrationally _terrified_ to remember.

“I don’t – I can’t, you don’t know –” And he was on his feet, unfolding out around his seat and escaping a few steps before retracing his steps and latching onto the back of the chair so tight his knuckles went white, under-skin circuits tracing faint light-shadows of themselves over the backs of his hands. “What’s in those files is only enough to send us all to the outlands with screaming nightmares. I don’t – I can’t – everything was so _glitched up_. I wasn’t in a good place; it got _bad fast_ , you have no idea –” He shot a desperate look at his brother. “I have no idea if your worlds were the same but if it was, you shouldn’t have to witness that again.”

He shouldn’t have to witness it _at all_. Regardless whether the actuary had experienced the same events, hearing a recap of Ram’s life was a guarantee that his newfound family would be pained. At least with the previous venture, the only person Ram had been hurting was _himself_.

He choked back the lump lodged in his throat, feeling sick in a way that was in no way connected to his fragile energy reserves, and closed his eyes. When he finally spoke again, his voice was quavering, a half-hearted plea that fell short, because he knew the answer already. “Are you sure there isn’t another way?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The last thing the actuary had wanted to do was make things _worse_. He tried to return the smile, though, quieting his own over-calculations and doing his best to just trust that they'd get through this.  
  
Roy, a comforting hand still on the infiltrator's back, made a wry face at the question. "Not gonna happen," he promised. If worse came to worst, he could program exceptions into Ram's filing system so nothing would touch the memories unless the infiltrator chose to access them deliberately. It would be a temporary solution at best -- he'd have to increase Ram's temp memory to allow him the same amount of normal storage, and they'd never be sure if the exceptions covered _every_ eventuality, though a series of failsafes could prevent future damage if anything slipped through, and it wouldn't mean the memories were _safe_ , but at least Ram would be able to sleep without fear.....  
  
..the User shook his head, breaking out of his fugue to refocus on his program. During the night he'd considered calling in a recompiler to take a second look, but decided against it. Alternate universe aside, he knew every line of this particular program's code; what he hadn't written into his own version of the program back home, he'd studied intently until it held no mysteries except the central one, the one he'd been unable to solve, the one he had a bad feeling about for no reason he could pin down.  
  
He was Ram's best hope. It was terrifying.  
  
When the infiltrator shot to his feet, Roy stood as well, restraining himself from following, wanting nothing more than to pull Ram back and hold on to him until he could breathe again but aware that the program had to find his own space -- had to feel safe and in control of his own movements until he could decide for himself what to do. The User's face was bloodless; he forced himself to breathe around the constriction in his chest, unable to either bear his program's suffering or alleviate it.  
  
The actuary tried to stay still, head bent to stare at the floor when he could no longer look at his brother. Finally he also stood abruptly, but turned in the other direction, taking a few unsteady steps across the room. It was that or put his disc through the wall, since if he tried to hug his brother now he wouldn't be able to hold onto his own wavering control and none of them needed another breakdown now.  
  
"I know," he said hoarsely. "It was bad--"  
  
\--not as bad, he was fairly certain now, as the other Ram had had it; as brutal as his own borrowed memories were, he could think of few things that would have left his former self like this. If he hadn't know the Tron in Ram's universe was still alive.... He cast a look at Roy; the return look told him what he needed to know. "I, I can go if you want," he said, a little desperately (it was the last thing _he_ wanted to do), turning back to the other Ram despite his resolution to give him space. "I've never... I never talked about it either. Not all of it."  
  
Not even to Roy, whose expression told the whole story. While the User would willingly have been there to listen, there'd been too much other history to go through in the rare times when the actuary had needed to talk about parts of his past that he usually kept buried. Now, too, he would have gladly respected the other Ram's need for distance from the horrors he'd just escaped; only a half-instinctive urgency he didn't understand and the knowledge that doing it quickly would limit Ram's suffering kept him from finding a reason, any reason, to put it all off for later.  
  
"You wouldn't need to say it all out loud," Roy said, somehow keeping the tears out of his voice. "Just a couple of keywords to call up each memory. I wish I didn't have to say this, but it's the best option we've got."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram shut his eyes, brow deeply furrowed, and shook his head as he expelled a forceful breath, wishing it was enough to toss his chaotic thoughts into order. Fidgeting badly back and forth on his heels, he bowed his head until it was nearly touching the space between his hands - then with an explosion of movement, the program rocked back and turned, twisting away to pace a small circuit near the table, raking his hands up into his hair as he muttered in binary.

The content of his mutterings was too low for even his brother to pick up, but it didn’t matter; the language that slipped past his lips was nonsense, as much as ones and zeroes could be. After a few micros, he turned back, grabbed the back of his chair, and levelled a look at his actuarial sibling. Emotion flickered across Ram’s features – regret, understanding, anguish, reluctance at war with desperation equal to that found in the actuary’s gaze.

~ _I…would be thankful for the company, Ram_ ,~ he said, finally, quietly, flexing fingers against the curve of the backboard he clung to. ~ _But if you feel you can’t stick around for all of it, I won’t blame you if you leave_.~

No move was made towards the actuary, no matter how much Ram wanted to cling to the other program and never let go. Instead, he pulled in an unsteady breath, and looked at Roy.

“If…if we’re doing this…” he started, paused, began again, the tremor in his voice fading as the tenacity and strength that had carried him through the Games so far was pulled from the depths of his conflicted emotive engines. “If we’re doing this, and if it works, then…I won’t stop if I start. I _can’t_ stop; else I won’t be able to do this all the way through. I think if I start with the smaller files, the earlier memories, and work forward to the present, I’ll be all right.” He grimaced and scrubbed a hand into his hair, a quiet whine pulled from his throat as he calculated just how far back he’d be going. “For the most part, at least.” A small test with a few less-important memory logs would be enough to see if the process was functional.

“And we need an ASCII translator,” he added, almost as an afterthought, opening his eyes and looking at his brother. “An external unit, if we can find one. I’m not sure some of the keywords are recorded in anything but binary.” Sometimes, ASCII-English just wasn’t enough to convey all that needed to be said about a situation. It wouldn’t be fair to their creator if Ram lapsed into the computer-language and was unable to communicate in a User-friendly medium, but he refused to make his brother feel _forced_ to bear witness, just to have an available source of translation handy.

He closed his eyes again and scrubbed a hand over his eyes, weary of this emotional _jai alai_. He’d always hated that game, more-so now that it was _him_ they were using as a ball.

“Just…give me a micro.”

Keeping his space from his family and his gaze turned down, Ram retreated, ghosting across the open flat to disappear into the solitude of the refresher.

A splash of cool water on his face was a balm against the knife’s-edge of panic he’d been teetering on, tamping it back until Ram no longer had the urge to glitch out and put his fist through the mirror. It was still somewhat unsettling to see a hint of wild disorder glinting in his reflection’s eyes, optical circuits sparking with the tiny flares of energy that were trying to rev up his systems for fight-or-flight. He was _safe_ , this wasn’t the compound. This was all for his benefit.

“Keep it together, Ram,” he muttered, gripping the edges of the sink. “You can do this. If not for yourself, then do it for Tron.” Maybe there was a scrap of _something_ buried in those faulted memories that would glean a modicum of reassurance as to what had happened to the missing security program.

This thought in mind, Ram straightened his shoulders and emerged from the refresher, returning to the main room.

“Are we ready?” he queried quietly, glancing from Ram to Roy as he sank onto the end of the couch, perched on the edge of the cushion. One leg bounced nervously under the arms that rested on his knees, but his expression was calm, if not somewhat pensive.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

~ _I'll stay,~_ Ram answered before his brother could even finish the second ping. If the infiltrator wanted him there, it wasn't even a question. And he could help Roy too, by providing context for some of the memories, so the unknowns didn't pile up and make it worse for the User. He pulled in a breath, something hovering at the edge of his processes, fact and implication and memory pitilessly harrying one another in pursuit of something he'd never managed to define.  
  
 _~If it helps, you and I, we're here now.~_ Something glinted in the corner of his eye; he looked down for a moment, blinking it back, and then raised his head again with a shaky but sincere smile. _~We made it.~_  
  
If his brother never had to face the canyons, so much the better.  
  
Roy looked back and forth between them, and broke the tension with a rueful mutter: "I really need to learn how to do that."  
  
  
User and actuary both listened attentively as Ram described his parameters. "Understood," Roy said quietly. "I won't try to stop you. Is there anything else you need? Would it help if there was a window open or -- or if we stay close to you? ..And that's no problem. I can open a translation window when you're ready to start." After a good deal of research, he was fairly certain that the translation algorithm accessible through the comm panel was a tool, on the order of a lightcycle or datapad, rather than a living program. Still... it did have a very pretty voice.  
  
  
When Ram had left the room his brother visibly sagged, fighting for control. Roy took a moment to pull himself together and then went over to him, unsurprised when the actuary's arm looped around his back.  
  
There was nothing to say. They both wished Ram didn't have to go through this. They both wished that it was over, or that it had never been necessary. They both knew that it was going to be harder on Ram than either of them, even the actuary, could guess. By unspoken agreement they shared another moment of mutual support and then each went to get situated for what was probably going to be a very long afternoon.  
  
  
They were waiting in the living area when Ram returned. Roy had the tablet and small unobtrusive translation window ready on the table and, having run through all of the options as best he could, had braced himself to go ahead. Ram-the-actuary was resting his elbows on his knees, fidgeting with his fingers in lieu of a better way to manage his kinetics. He looked up, uncertain, not sure whether reaching over to his brother would count as an interruption beforehand; but his eyes were dry and the infiltrator's bearing gave him heart.  
  
"Ready," Roy confirmed, the regret in his eyes overshadowed by the knowledge of what had to be done. Calling up the display from Ram's disc once more, he set it on the table beside the translation window, so he could monitor it as the new process he'd written painlessly copied the files moving through the program's active memory.


	12. Chapter 12

Ram looked from his brother to his creator, at the worried but steadfast loyalty in the actuary’s eyes, at the compassion and resolution in Roy’s, and felt better for it. Somehow, just having them there lessened the tension that ached in his chest, loosened anxiety’s grip on his processors and replaced it with a feeling of warmth. It was a strange thing, having a family. Strange...but good.

He fixed his gaze on the disk and tablet that rested on the low-lying table, and inhaled a fortifying breath.

“Log, record, begin file scan,” he muttered, not sure why he had spoken aloud rather than executed the command silently. “Keyword...Games.”

A feeling itched through his processors, pressure behind his eyes, like something pressing on them from the inside, as too many images flashed past to make sense of. The infiltrator winced minutely and cancelled the command. “Too broad,” he said sheepishly, reassuring the others. “Need to narrow the field.” _[Partition.amend keyword, limit file transfer to 25kb/s - retry.]_

Start over. Start at the beginning. Start from...“Keywords: Compound, arrival.” Start from his capture, the first memory he had since the last time he’d been in hibernation long enough to start the archival of temp files and...dream.

Images flickered through his mind, mirrored on the disk readout like a silent movie, ghosts of the past given form. Ram could almost laugh at his younger self; he’d been so naive, so absorbed in his own code and business that he hadn’t even noticed the dwindling population in his home sector. There was guilt, there, etched into his code, the first regret he carried, not being aware enough to realise his friends and co-utilities were disappearing, that red was becoming more prominent than blue, green, pink.

On the table, the disk readout flared briefly, a new alert box popping up. _[Now copying files to external drive. Progress: 0%]_ It minimized, and the tablet gave a soft beep. Both mediums now displayed a synchronisation bar. To everyone’s relief, it ticked up from 0% to 1%, without incident; the file rested safely on the pad’s memory card.

Success.

Ram didn’t notice. Too deep in his memories, he only stared at his hands, interlaced fingers, as he spoke in soft reflection. Sometimes, they were just keywords that unlocked a new wave of similar images packaged together: waiting in the compound, complaining about rations, poking fun at the guards. Confusion, anger, boredom. Oh, there was a lot of boredom. Other times he actually said more, explaining in detail, limited or in full, some event that had stuck in his memory more readily than those interim moments.

“Keyword: Compound, Tron, first meeting,” the infiltrator murmured, and ran a thumb over the inside of his right palm. “Losing faith.”

He’d been so close to giving up faith in the Users, in Roy, when Tron had come. The security program had been a breath of defiance and fresh energy to the compound. At first he’d been standoffish, almost Rinzler-esque it could be said by those who likely recognised that prowling gait, that rumbling growl of agitation. But he was a new element, and Ram had been irrevocably intrigued.

His recitation turned wry as he recounted the moment that a data-pusher had said the wrong thing, and had been rightly put in his place by the pissed-off monitor.

 _"My designation is Tron, JA-307020, and I am a free program. I will not be broken. I will not give up. I know my User is waiting for me. I am going to get out of here. I_ _will_ _take down the MCP. And I. Fight. For the_ _**Users** _ _."_

A shiver ran through Ram’s frame, just as it had that microcycle, blue circuits pulsing slightly with the strength those words had given him. He closed his eyes, paused to wet his lips, let the packet of files from that encounter finish transferring.

With a soft sigh, he opened his eyes, and began again.

“Keyword: Compound, Games, Tron, first summons...”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy had glanced over when the first scan started, ready to abort it if it got out of control, but Ram took care of it himself, and started on the next. The copy process began, and the memories flickered past in the disc readout; the actuary watched their User's face rather than the blue display, and mirrored his relief when the first memory transferred safely.  
  
A quick nod on Roy's part, looking from one program to the other, confirmed it. The process worked.  
  
Now they just had to get through it.  
  
  
At first, the audible portions of the infiltrator's memories were familiar to his brother (aside from the compound; the actuary had known about it and even trained new conscripts there, but had been shunted to solitary almost immediately). Some of the congruences were amusing; most were sad, or called back rages and fears that had long dwelt unexamined in his files. He kept his calm, though, breaking in once or twice in a low voice to add context for Roy when ambiguous keywords came up.  
  
He smiled when Tron was mentioned, though a shadow of pain and regret touched his face at the following words.  
  
 _Losing faith_.  
  
His faith had been so simple, at first. The time he'd spent with Roy was too short for it to have been otherwise. After leaving for the insurance company, he'd never expected to hear from his User, his _own_ User, again. And the others? He'd been there to help _them_ , not the other way around.  
  
He'd missed them, of course. It had been a generalized sorrow, but no less strong; he understood well the frightened new conscripts who called for their Users in their sleep. But he'd always expected their help to come through their programs -- not least because, almost alone of the conscripts, he knew how fragile a User's future could be.  
  
All the faith in the world couldn't prove they were really still there.  
  
Until Tron.  
  
  
The memory of Tron's diatribe lingered in its queue as the infiltrator recited its words. Though the disc was set to display code rather than images, Roy caught an echo of the warrior's power, itself an echo of Alan's wildcat days, in Ram's voice and motions. He glanced over at the actuary's rapt face and smiled -- he knew the feeling.  
  
As the memory closed and the packet transferred safely, he quietly pulled up the progress bar. So far so good.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

It seemed that with the introduction of Tron in the files, Ram-the-infiltrator was able to draw on new strength, and began elaborating more on the files that now flicked past at rapid speed. “Keyword: Tron, training” brought to memory long millicycles of practice together, learning new tricks and, dare he say it, having fun. Oh, the boredom was still there, and the tension of fear never really left the set of their shoulders, but the compound was far more tolerable with Tron in their midst. They were all in this together, after all.

Ram spoke of humour, as well, though such moments were few and far between. He talked of the time he first got a surprise strike in on Tron during practice – bouncing his disk off the wall behind him at just the right angle to send it ricocheting back, smacking the monitor upside the head. The face Tron had made had been priceless; the memory of it earned his family a laugh from the program, though it was short-lived and lacking the humour it should’ve held. He talked of long nights and Game-filled days, impromptu tickle fights, his unending hatred of Jai Alai, and his habit of taking off his helmet against Tron’s orders for the (almost) sole reason of getting the circuits in his hair skritched.

For posterity’s sake, and with a faintly embarrassed glance at Roy, Ram even recited his poem, the one that he had come up with scratched out in binary on the compound floor. It was probably still there after all this time, entertaining fresh conscripts with horrible lyrics about Sark’s overcompensating helmet and the MCP’s back ports. Ram wondered if he’d ever get a chance to find out.

He made sure to tell it in English _and_ in binary. It really did sound better that way, despite Tron’s scepticism – but it was still pretty horrible.

The longer Ram talked, the less humour there was to be found, and even the enjoyable memories took on a bittersweet tone.

Making up stories about their Users during downtimes should’ve been an amusing tale, especially now that Ram had _met_ his User. Certainly, the way he’d imagined R_Kleinberg7 was probably quite flattering to Roy, though Ram didn’t go into too much detail of what had been said. Instead Ram could only think of _why_ he and Tron had started that routine: as a way to stave off the hopelessness and tedium.

Then there were the awkward moments, where Ram stumbled over “Keyword: Code quirk, lightcycles” and wouldn’t look his brother in the eye, the stigma of having faulty code too deeply ingrained for the infiltrator _not_ to be ashamed by it, regardless of his family’s acceptance. Even if being unable touch a vehicle without it turning the colour of the system defaults was a _useful_ outcome, it still meant there was something broken deep inside his binary makeup that no amount of recompilation could fix.

The memories of the Games, especially, could not be accessed without installing an absent, sick feeling in Ram’s core. Where once he’d felt proud of his accomplishments and survival, the knowledge he’d gained in recent cycles had turned those feelings hollow.

Carding fingers through his curls, taking a measure of comfort from the brush of his fingers over thread-thin circuitry, he bowed his head and uttered the words he had been dreading to reach.

“Keyword: Games, blue team. Friendly fire.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

There had been good times. Ram's laughter was contagious, and the actuary explained through giggles the in-jokes and small kindnesses and gallows humor the conscripts had used to make pit life bearable for one another.  
  
Some of them... you'd really had to be there for, and Roy tried to take what he didn't understand as it was given. Nothing he'd ever personally endured, even the skirmishes involved in retaking the Grid in his own world, had anything on this. There were stories in his family, though -- most of his older male relatives had fought in the World Wars, and some were still unable to speak of branches of kin lost in Europe, so while terminology and cultural references might have been unfamiliar, the overall situation did resonate.  
  
The actuary, meanwhile, had resolved to talk with his brother about some of the better moments they'd both experienced. Better to reinforce those memories than the other ones, if they all had to be accessed. The limerick, for one, was hilarious, and he cried actual tears of laughter while trying to explain the binary version; swapping User stories was another common thread. A few things didn't translate at all -- he had to shrug at the quirk, with no idea why Ram would be reluctant to discuss it; the terminology for such things was different in his world, and though his own lightcycle had always rezzed red (no matter the system default), he'd never identified a particular cause. Reaching over, he patted Ram's hand. Whatever it was, nobody was going to judge him for it.  
  
  
Roy looked worriedly over at the actuary when the next set of keywords came up. The grim answering look confirmed that they were, in fact, as disturbing as they sounded, and the User, after checking the open disc once more to make sure the copy process was still going smoothly, kept his eyes on his program.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

For a long moment, Ram was quiet, face hidden by the curls that hung between his fingers. The memories were too recent, too raw; unlocking them had been a torrent of horror and pain that had caught him off-guard. He had to breathe for a moment, regain his footing, before he could access the files.

“We were on the lightcycle grid, me and Tron. Our third teammate had already gone down, but it was us against one El...Elite.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “It was an easy win. Should’ve been. Something wasn’t right, though. Programs derezzed if their bikes were broken, they always had. This one didn’t.” Fingertips curled against his scalp. “Tron didn’t want me near him. Didn’t want me to see. Should’ve listened. Glitch, it was bad.”

“He wasn’t Elite,” he said, with a sort of hitching sound in his voice. “He had –” Plain words failed him; there was too much emotion in the memory file to convey properly. Binary slipped unbidden from his tongue, head shaking as if to deny the entire memory its existence. ~ _Blue circuits. I never realised, never knew. I never_ knew _._ ~

Tron had harboured suspicions, but there had never been any proof. Seeing that rider had confirmed the depths the MCP was willing to sink to; conscripts pitted against their own allies. The sickness Ram had felt at this realisation, that he had _enjoyed_ the games at some base level, when he was killing programs on his own side...he moaned and shook his head again, harder, sucking in a stabilising breath and pushing forward through the files.

“I didn’t take it well. Knowing the MCP was pitting us against each-other, instead of Us versus Them – we took the rider off the Grid, tried to make him comfortable. Wasn’t anything else we could do.” Another hitch in his voice. ~ _He never woke up. Never learned his name or who his User was. He died unknown and abandoned because I was having_ fun _._ ~ _/disgust-shame-anger_ echoed off the binary, almost tangible in their heat, written plainly in the wretched curve of Ram’s lips. And more, _/misery-self-loathing_ , the program’s face as wan and horrified as it had been that microcycle.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As Ram began to speak again, the last of the files flashing through his active memory were quietly copied and archived.  
  
Nobody saw them go.  
  
Nobody was looking.  
  
Ram's account, more verbal than any of the others, had riveted both onlookers. It was lucky that he'd thought of the translator; as he went on, his brother had become quieter, only speaking when there was something Roy needed context for right away. At the revelation, though, the actuary had slammed his fists on his knees, swearing violently in ascii. He'd looked every program he'd fought in the eye when they'd assembled in the holding area before transport; none of them had worn blue, though some had used to. Most had been contemptuous. Some had been scared. Those were the breaks. But the arena had been too wide to tell if the team that had transported out was the same as the one that had transported in.  
  
Burying his face in his hands for a moment, he shuddered inwardly and wrenched himself back to the present, enough to clench his hand around Roy's in silent assurance that he'd be okay and they needed to focus on his brother now.  
  
For a moment Roy hadn't thought he'd understood the translator correctly. But it had been set to pick up words in any language, so as not to leave phrases out of context, and the whole story lay silent on the surface of the table (including the older program's outburst). Before he could find words, soothing or otherwise, the younger one had gone on, describing the death of the unknown program, and the actuary moved to his side and wrapped an arm around his back. Roy, shifting the translation window to the arm of the couch so it wouldn't be in Ram's face, moved to his other side and did the same.  
  
A couple of the pings hadn't translated properly. From the gibberish that resulted, he guessed they were purely emotive; he didn't have to see those written out to feel the horror and shame that must have gone with them. Part of him, the cautious assessing part, was glad they'd managed to get Ram properly powered up before this; if working through trauma was as draining for programs as it was for humans (and he had no doubt of that anymore), he'd need every bit of that energy, and probably a long rest afterwards. It had been all he could do to remember Ram's caution against interrupting and let him speak on. The status bar had been near the end the last time he'd looked at it. It couldn't get much worse than this.  
  
Or so he hoped.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram hardly noticed as his family took up space beside him, head still bowed over his knees, fingers tangled almost painfully in his curls. His shoulders shuddered as his brother’s arm slid across them – then his User’s, brushing circuits with a gentle, infusive current of warmth, of reassurance, acceptance, comfort. It drew Ram up from the depths of his memory files, brought him back to the present enough that blue eyes no longer looked as blank and dead.

~ _That rider’s deresolution was the last byte for Tron,_ ~ he resumed, more subdued now, hollow-voiced, his hands slowly dropping from his hair to hang limp from his knees, one cupped around the other, right hand cradled in his left. ~ _He tried to rally the compound to rebellion, but he’s not exactly written to cause a cascading systems failure._ ~ The program stared blankly at his hands, a thumb tracing the faintly outlined scar that crossed his palm, rubbing incessantly at the old wound with distant anxiety.

~ _I think I went a bit mad, to be honest,~_ the infiltrator admitted, the corner of his mouth twitching with gallows humour. _~Was sick of being superfluous to the cause. When we met, I told Tron I wanted to fight back, but all I’d done was derezz my own side and prolonged my own existence.~_ He breathed in a sigh. _~So I found a box, and I went to the middle of the compound, and I did the calculations it would take to take out the force-field generators with my disk._ ~

He sounded almost casual about this, speaking as though he were just commenting on the weather, but there was a hint of the knife’s-edge he was balancing on underlying his calm. He knew his actuarial brother was probably trying to work out the math himself, and tried not to wince at the inevitable gasp. Considering how weak their rations had been, and how far the towers were, it had been an act of sheer desperation to try and disable them. It had taken far too much of his reserves, and for a frightening moment after his disk returned to him, he’d felt the sharp shards of gray clutching the edges of his processor, the cold tendrils of shutdown threatening to take him under.

~ _I was really stupid, in retrospect. Gouged my palm open on my own disk, I was clutching it so hard. Had a bit of a speech – very inspirational, really, took me back to my cycles in Insurance.~_ A bitter smile, as the memory of that speech was packaged neatly and crossed the divide between disk and tablet. He bit his lip, thumb digging harder against his palm, trembling slightly.

 _~Nearly derezzed myself, putting that much power into my cast, but it got the job done.~_ A quiet snort, a humourless chuckle. _~My first act as a hacker was getting those doors open. Then the compound rose up in revolt, and we had to fight, and there was no more time for me to be out of my logic chips. I wasn’t quite in shape to run just yet. So I gave Tron my disk, and he led the charge. Bits and bugs, you should see him dual-wield, it’s a thing of beauty._ ~

What joviality there had been in his tone vanished behind a curtain of desolation.

~ _Not that it did much good._ ~

He’d caught up with Tron, in the end, but they’d been quickly overwhelmed. The MCP’s numbers had been far more than they had anticipated. The memory of Tron’s face, snarling curses in binary as they slammed him into the wall, was burned into Ram’s files. Moreso was the images that came after: the sudden slackness and obedience that overwhelmed his friend’s fire as they clapped him in function binders. The fear in Tron’s eyes as the guards dragged him away. The sound of Ram’s own screams of rage and terror echoing in his audio files.

“ _Tron!_ ”

Ram shuddered savagely and clutched his head, a grimace of anguish stretching lips thin over bared teeth, as the first sob wracked his shoulders. _~There were too many; they overwhelmed us, captured us together. Locked Tron in function-binders…the way he just…went limp – the look on his_ face _, Users help us. I’d never seen him show_ fear _before.~_ A hitching breath. _~They dragged us off; I never saw him again after that. Locked me up for a while, but then – Sark. He hooked me in…into the decompiler. He just...kept_ taunting _me, demanding to know how I had taken out the towers. Didn’t think I could do it by myself, wanted me to give up names, but I wouldn’t tell him. I didn’t! I_ couldn’t _._ Deletion _, being electrocuted really glitching_ hurts _.~_

Another sob, half-mixed with a painful laugh.

 _~I think it was the poem that pushed him over the edge. Or the remark about interfacing with a lightcycle baton. All I remember is pain, blacking out…nothing until I woke up in that energy spring.~_ A quieter shudder and Ram’s voice grew small and lost, slipping out of binary. “I left him behind. Tron’s still back there, and I _left_...”

No tears, just pure, abstract misery, painted on the infiltrator’s face, soon hidden as he buried his face in his palms. He’d held back the brunt of his emotion throughout the process, and now, the floodgates were unlocked. Shoulders shivered once, and again, and finally a fresh sob, as the program began to cry.


	13. Chapter 13

During a brief lull as the infiltrator caught his breath, Ram-the-actuary had looked up, catching their User's eye, and whispered almost inaudibly, "I don't remember any of this." Roy nodded: message received. He hadn't heard anything similar from any other Ram he'd met either. They were in uncharted territory now; the timelines had diverged too far to take anything for granted.  
  
Roy covered the infiltrator's hands with his free hand, fingers slipping between Ram's fingers and the dark scar, hoping to give him something to hold on to instead of worrying at the vulnerable code. Then Ram started to talk about fighting back, and the User listened with lightning racing down his spine, feeling the same tension in Ram's shoulders and in his other program where their arms crossed. He rubbed Ram's back, hoping to soothe out some of the tension, the resulting low-level power transfer an unconscious attempt to strengthen and comfort. It was all he could do.  
  
The actuary had turned his head against his brother's, murmuring something too low to hear. It was probably in binary anyway; Roy felt sure that if he needed to know, the older program would find a way to tell him. But then Ram mentioned the generators and the actuary nearly choked, raising a stricken face to stare at Roy and mouthing a few more silent words. Roy caught **_way_** _too much power_ and _lucky not to derezz_ , and his hand tightened around Ram's as he finally understood where that vicious wound had come from.  
  
Was that what had happened? -- no, there'd been torture too, more recent than this. Had Ram lost too much power trying to knock out the force fields, and left himself without the strength to withstand the decompiler? If he'd died back there, would they even know? Roy hadn't actually done any case studies on programs who'd derezzed prior to arriving on the Free Grid versus those who'd simply found themselves here without warning or reason. He'd thought Ram to be one of the latter, if a battered and shellshocked one -- but this... this had been close. Maybe too close. But nothing about having derezzed back home would explain his read-only errors.  
  
Ram spoke on. _Bits and bugs_.... program slang, program conventions, echoes of the swift complex lives that had used to leave so few traces in the outer world. As Roy looked past Ram's curls at the actuary's drawn face, he remembered that both he and the older program _had_ seen Tron dual-wield, but in a very different context. The heartstopping deadly skill of the dark figure prowling the Users' ill-starred maze clashed suddenly with a very different vision, and how were they ever going to explain--  
  
But as he listened, it came to him also that this Ram had come close to inciting a successful jailbreak on his own, with no help from the Users -- selflessly offering up his strength and skill with no thought for his own future, rallying the other conscripts where even Tron had failed, taunting his captors and refusing to betray the friend he'd lost even as his code was being torn apart.  
  
Roy had been that young once. He didn't know, hadn't known -- he hoped, in heaven's name -- that if such terrible things had come to pass, he could have been that brave.  
  
He pulled Ram against him, holding him fiercely and talking in a low voice, consoling and reassuring, calling him out of the flashbacks and into the present. The other Ram, pulled in too, leaned his head on his brother's shoulder, and Roy wrapped his arms around them both as the infiltrator began to weep.  
  
It had to be over now -- Ram's arrival on the Free Grid was the latest timestamp on the list of endangered files. Roy had wished with all his heart that there had been a better way to do this. Forcing Ram to relive the horrors he'd just escaped... under any other circumstances, it would have been among the worst things they could do to him. But he'd made it -- he'd made it through them the first time, and he'd made it through this; the worst was over and hopefully the tears could be healing ones.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram dug bare fingers to the pixels of his User’s coat, pressed against pure circuits radiating supernatural warmth, clung like the child he very much was, because how old had he been when he’d been taken away? The sobs that wracked him were deep, almost soundless gasps, tempered just shy of hyperventilation only by automatic subroutines and the need to draw air for his cooling systems. He bled emotion, uncensored and open-broadcast; only felt by his brother pressed against his side, through the contact of blue-on-blue, like-code, dim-on-bright.

It was a saying in the User world that a bad experience needed to be ‘processed’ before one’s mind could begin to recover. Never more so was this true for programs, for whom the term could be applied literally. A hard drive overloaded above capacity couldn’t function. Ram had _felt_ , but he hadn’t _comprehended_. He had feared, but had to remain strong. He had grieved, but kept himself alert; he had channelled rage into defiance, and wept only as long as he could. It had only served to deepen the pain, forcing it to linger, as the files doubled and tripled in number. It took unburdening those files from his systems to truly _process_ , and to _heal_.

The burden of his memories belonged to more than just him now. Ram didn’t have to suffer them alone, didn’t have to keep a part of himself back any longer, and so like a candle touched to flash paper, his outpouring of emotion burned bright and brief. Sobs petered into rasping sighs; curled-over frame trembled within the embrace of his family. Eventually, the strength drained out of him, and his desperate clinging to Roy’s attire became more of a weary cuddle, the infiltrator silent at last. Exhaustion dimmed his array, but the arm that suddenly shifted to wrap around Ram-the-actuary’s wrist was firm, a quiet brush of _/love-family-thankfulness_ speaking where he didn’t have the energy to form words.

Discharge had streaked his cheeks where it hadn’t rubbed off onto Roy’s clothing, but his eyes were bright and clear, free of any pain and lacking the tension that had strained them since his arrival. The barest of twitches touched his mouth, and another brush skated through the contact he had on his brother’s wrist. _/query-energy?_

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

They let him cry it out -- the actuary with a hitching sob or two against his brother's back, sending comforting pings over from time to time, and Roy, arms locked around them both, leaning against the infiltrator's curls.  
  
The User's cheeks were damp as well, except where some of the wetness had rubbed off against Ram's hair. He'd been able to feel the actuary, swept into the flood of emotion on a tide of his own memories, shaking under his arm, and he returned the younger program's desperate clutch with a desperation of his own. The cascade of misery surrounded them all, suffocating, overpowering, and Roy clung to his programs as if he could shield them from it with pure force of intent; but it ebbed at last, leaving a strange sense of freedom in its wake.   
  
Together, they'd broken through the storm.  
  
Roy shifted his arms around the two, willing to sit there for the rest of the day if that was what they needed. He couldn't see their faces -- the younger Ram had burrowed against his chest and the elder was wrapped around his brother like a limpet -- but the slow easing of the tension that had wracked them was a very welcome change.  
  
  
It had been harder on the older Ram than he'd been prepared to admit. His brother's experiences had evoked their parallels in the memories he'd inherited -- the memories that had laid him out for a week as he'd struggled to integrate them alone, without sympathy or support. He'd thought it had gone pretty well, considering. He'd seldom talked about it since, and never in detail; after the initial horror, it had all seemed remote and unimportant when balanced against the atrocities that programs under Clu's rule were facing every day. But apparently integration wasn't the same as processing; the other Ram's stories had brought it all to vivid life in a way none of his cautious mental prodding had done.  
  
He'd slipped a few times as the infiltrator cried, pinging ZackAttack with some of the same _/shame-pain-why_ he was receiving from his brother, knowing the User couldn't understand but feeling his own burden lighten a little with the one-sided communication. He was careful not to let it echo back, letting only comfort, commiseration, and healing seep over to the other Ram, and holding on all the tighter as his sobs gave way to peace. When the infiltrator's hand locked around his wrist, he smiled and burrowed closer, returning a low-frequency hum of affection and contentment.  
  
The query for energy made him aware that he was running low too, though not nearly as low as his brother. He sent back a quiet _/yes-good-hangon_ , but couldn't bring himself to move for a moment; the loss of contact was almost a physical pain. Still, someone had to do it, and with a last tight hug and a murmur to let Roy know where he was going, he creaked to his feet and ambled back to the kitchen.  
  
Roy sent a worried look after the haggard actuary, but shifted only enough to gather the younger program closer, relaxing against the cushioned back of the couch. They'd all been through the wringer, but the infiltrator most of all.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The younger Ram sent a brush of / _thanks_ in his elder’s wake when he finally gathered the will to get up, himself merely remedying the loss of presence by pulling a slow breath through his circulators and shifting with Roy as the User made himself more comfortable. It left the program the opportunity to ease joints out of the stiff position they had been locked in for the past…however long it had been since they’d started. He didn’t have the strength or the want to check his chronometer. Instead, the infiltrator nestled his head lower on Roy’s chest, eyes half-lidded in weariness. They closed fully as fingers carded through messy curls, and a little hitching sigh escaped his throat, mournful and contented all at once.

He took the time now to focus his energy inwards, letting a simple diagnostics subroutine run through his root code. The method of file transfer had been unorthodox, but didn’t seem to have caused any problems, aside from the strangely empty sensation in his memory database. With his link to the tablet still live, he could remotely access the files, but the copy had diminished the strength of the originals, compressing them to free up space in his allotted memory. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

Somewhere along the line, his language centres had been switched off, which explained the odd muteness he had assumed just to be a lack of available energy to speak. That was his next fix, turning permissions back on and selecting the required language pack. He was just about finished with this when the actuary returned. Ram took the proffered glass of energy with a hoarsely whispered “Thanks pro,” and struggled into more of a seated position so as not to drown himself trying to drink.

Gulping down half the energy helped immensely to clear the lingering fog from his logic circuits. The infiltrator settled back against the cushions, legs folded underneath him as he cradled the receptacle in both hands. The remaining energy glimmered fresh and silvery-clear, pure enough that Ram could see his reflection in the surface. Cleansed he may have felt, but he looked awful.

The thought bid a quiet snort from the infiltrator, then another less-humoured sniff and sigh. “Should’a done more,” he said – a quiet, broken mumble of internal thought that had accidently slipped out. “Sorry Tron.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

In fact, it had taken little more than an hour: an hour and a couple hundred harrowing microcycles, give or take. Roy didn't care to check the time either. He'd run a hand through Ram's hair where it had gotten tangled -- did programs sweat, or had they all just cried that much? -- and settled it on the back of the program's neck. (Both he and the actuary had shared a blushing grin at the detail about Tron and hair-skritches, but he'd forgotten that by now, aware only that it was the right thing to do.)  
  
As the actuary returned and Ram moved to take the proffered glass of energy, Roy took the opportunity to knuckle some of the tears off his own face. The other Ram simply _whumph_ ed down at the infiltrator's side again, setting his own half-finished drink down on the table and checking to see if Roy needed anything before curling against his brother once more.  
  
A glance over at Ram's disc showed its display still open and waiting patiently. It would keep, the User thought; they'd done what they needed to do. He smiled as Ram's circuits showed the effects of the draught of energy; it was amazing how fast that stuff worked.  
  
He had to wince, though, at the halting, hesitant words; how could Ram still blame himself for being spirited away _out of a torture chamber_ by a process that hadn't been under his control? But before he could find a response, the elder Ram reached over to grip his brother's shoulder. "He's Tron," the actuary said, utter conviction in the quiet voice, despite the shadow of sympathetic tension that lingered around his eyes. "He'll make it."  
  
Looking between them, the User was struck anew by their unity of purpose, despite thousands of cycles of history and (now) altered base directives; he'd said some of the same things while Ram had been sobbing in his arms, but with a radically different intent than that which resonated from them now. This wasn't about blame or lack of it, or even comfort, really.  
  
They were warriors.  
  
That was it.  
  
He might have written them, but even the younger Ram had been through more than Roy had ever experienced, and it was the warrior side of the elder brother finding common ground with the younger and with the spirit of the program who'd taught them to survive -- and to hope even when the odds were the worst. New tears pricked at the User's eyes, and he had to swallow around a lump in his throat.  
  
"You did everything you could -- more than that. That's how I wrote you," he said, a little haltingly. "Or at least how my copy wrote you in the world you came from. I... I know if he were here he'd be as proud of you as I am--"   
  
His voice failed him then, but only for a moment; when he looked back up, his smile boded no good for anything that got in their way. "Soon as we can get a strike force planned and trace your origin point, we're going in and we'll get him back." _And you can carve that limerick on Sark's face if you want to_. He didn't say that out loud, though. Even the famous Kleinberg sense of humor knew when to give it a rest and besides, it wasn't entirely a joke.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As Roy watched, Ram looked up to stare at his brother for a moment, as those few poignant words were offered with quiet conviction. After a moment, the infiltrator allowed a weak smile to tug the corner of his lips up, blossomed from that small seed of optimism. With a sigh he leaned over enough that their foreheads actually bumped – which wasn’t far, given that they were tucked together pretty close – and huffed softly. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but there was a hint of self-chastising hope in it.

“You’re right. He’s _Tron_. Kinda says it all, huh?” he mumbled, and smiled a bit more, resting his head against the actuary’s shoulder for a moment, before he raised it to sip at his ration and turn his attention to Roy.

He was quiet for a long moment after the User finished speaking, and slowly, a ghost of the grin that Roy wore spread with vicious approval across his face, transforming the infiltrator’s face into something dangerous. Well, as dangerous as a wet cat, perhaps. Ram was still rather run-down and bedraggled, but a gleam in his eye suggested he was thinking the same terrible thing about Sark’s bug-munched face.

“I think…my Roy,” he said, hesitant about the phrasing, “would approve of this plan, if he were in on it. I always told Tron that I thought you’d – he’d – be kinda sneaky. He’d have to be, to write an infiltrator into the code of an actuary.” He tilted his head slightly, and after a moment’s thought, added, “Calling you something different just because you’re not ‘ _my Roy_ ’ feels weird though. You found me out there, brought me back, helped me out. As far as I’m concerned, _you’re_ my User too, even if you didn’t write me yourself. _A_ Roy did, which is just as close, which makes us family. Right?” He glanced between them, conviction backed with a hint of insecurity.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The actuary shifted as his brother leaned closer, wrapping his arm around his back again, and grinned as their heads knocked lightly together. "Yeah," he answered quietly. If the multiverse could unbend enough to allow one of his doubles a chance at survival (for what else could it mean that he'd been transported here?), then surely Tron could get away with anything.  
  
(Reversals were also possible, of course. But Ram was determined not to think about that.)  
  
Roy nodded soberly, though a slight twinkle in his eye showed how glad he was to see that spark of the infiltrator's spirit showing through. "I hope so," he smiled, his voice still a little rough with emotion. "I can do sneaky. Told you, I'm a ninja; he probably is too.~" He wished his double _had_ been here -- the more the merrier, and how weird could it be, after this?  
  
But he couldn't let that little wobble slip past. Leaning in, he caught first the actuary's eye -- no more written by _him_ than the infiltrator was, but his program just the same -- and then the younger program's, taking his hand, the unseen connection between them all drawn strong and secure. "Maybe we'll get to meet him someday, when the Users in your world figure out how to get into the system. But as far as I'm concerned, we'll _always_ be family, okay?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

One would’ve thought Ram had purged all the tears from his system with his earlier jag, but to his embarrassment the infiltrator felt heat prickle the corners of his eyes, discharge pooling enough to make his optical sensors slightly blurred. He ducked his head as a fresh, emotional grin lit up his whole face and brightened the circuits that lined pale fingers, seeming so small wrapped in the tanned warmth of Roy’s hand.

Emotion this overwhelming needed to be _expressed_ , he decided. With a fragile laugh, he indulged the sudden need to _touch_ and wrapped his arms around Roy’s torso, squeezing tightly.

“Thanks, Roy,” he said thickly, as he pulled back with a sniff and a quick swipe at his eyes, clearing his vision in time to catch a glimpse of the still-open diagnostics display hovering over his disk. With a quiet chuckle, he nodded towards it, and extricated himself enough to reach for it.

“Guess we should close the session, huh? Would be kinda redundant if all that data got erased because –” Hands stilled their automatic movements to close the transfer session, as brow knit in puzzlement. Rather than continue the shut-down procedure, he touched the file queue, bringing it to the front. It should’ve been empty. Instead, there were still a clump of files registered as waiting for transfer.

“…Didn’t we do these already?” Ram said, confused, squinting at the timestamps. They had a double-number system applied, marking the save-point by both Ram’s internal chronometers and the Free Grid’s system clock, indicating they had been generated since Ram’s arrival – directly upon arrival, actually, if the first file’s filename was correct. He tilted the display for Roy to look at, as something uncomfortable began brewing in his processors. “Check the datapad; I know I went over these memories. Maybe they just didn’t transfer.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The hug gene had definitely not skipped XR's branch of the Kleinberg clan. (Back home, especially when the family was gathered together, there was hardly a time of day when one wasn't hugging _someone_.) Hauling him in, Roy hugged back hard, the way his parents had hugged him after a long day.  
  
The actuary, who'd leaned back tiredly with his feet propped on the table, simply grinned at them both. He'd thought about inviting Ram out for a ride around the sector once the transfer was done, to introduce him to new things and take his mind off what he'd gone through, but after this? Probably a quiet afternoon indoors or on the roof would be a better choice. He could show the infiltrator some of his better memories, or they could all curl up and watch a movie, or start planning Tron's rescue and the MCP's early demise, or just talk about anything and everything without time limits or interruptions from glitch-faced memory guards. Stats could probably get along without him for another day, and they could look at system maps and help him learn his way around, and even if Roy had to go help with the rebuilding effort (which he would, of course, if Ram knew his User~), there were plenty of people to introduce him to, with Roy's flat a safe haven any time he needed some quiet.   
  
Roy had been thinking something similar, but the infiltrator's reach for the datapad interrupted his train of thought. "Yeah," he nodded, "wouldn't want -- huh?" Drawn first to Ram's puzzlement and then to the expanded file queue, Roy squinted in surprise, reaching for the disc. "That's weird. Yeah, all of those should have... curiouser and curiouser." He glanced up with a glint of analytical suspicion in his eyes, carefully holding back his unease so as not to try Ram's nerves as he checked the specs of the transferred files against the pending ones. "The file sizes don't match up. Same timestamps, different memories? They could be backups from your own memories when you tried to access the other ones...." It was a guess, if a valid one, and they all knew it. The actuary bit his lip, sharing a long-suffering look with his brother. They'd done everything right -- what more did the multiverse want from them?


	14. Chapter 14

Rather than reassured by the hypothesis, the look Ram exchanged with his more mathematical sibling was that of code-deep weariness, dread, and not a little hopelessness. It seemed like every time he learned something fantastic or uplifting, reality was determined to cut him off at the knee like a disk strike, well-aimed to cause his happiness to crash and shatter into so many voxels.

Tucking his arms around his chest in a gesture of self-comfort, he exhaled a heavy, resigned sigh and shut his eyes, delving back into the file process of his memories.

“…They’re all the same,” he muttered uneasily, flicking through each one with the metaphorical equivalent of two fingers, not wanting to touch something that made him feel so queasy. “Dark, enclosed. Red light. I –” he cut off, startling as an image of Sark’s face loaded, cruel sneer and all; his breathing pattern picked up in alarm. “Sark. I – that’s the decompiler, but it’s not, he never got that close before…” He shook his head, banishing the file for the next. It was another moment that seemed familiar, yet not; the feeling of paralysis, frozen, unable to speak as a medic in red and green loomed over him. “These were in my flashbacks earlier…I remember this, but it never _happened_.” He’d assumed the images were just chips glitching, throwing out random data as a side-effect of the electroshock and energy-bath.

After a moment, he twitched, shuddered, and opened his eyes. The bleakness in them was horrible. “…Well. Can’t say I didn’t expect something like that.”

From the look on Roy’s face, the User had come to the same conclusion. The files Ram had accessed were glitched and full of static; data-ghosted images of the energy spring, the lightjet, even the pillow fight from earlier – all the memories Ram had experienced since arriving, the ones he had transferred first. Every single one was overlaid on something darker, something more solid; memories of nothing but low-resolution walls and the surrounding glow of force fields, the burning red colours of Memory Guards and Sentries. Ram the actuary would recognise it easily enough; the Pit cells of the Games Arenas were hard to erase from ones databanks.

Which brought up the question, how could the newest Ram remember them? The infiltrator had never been to the Pits in his runtime, if his memory banks were to be trusted. That left one possibility, a horrible, obvious one: the memories were recording real-time, with the Free Grid superimposed on top.

The laugh that spilled out of Ram’s throat was sick and high-pitched, as he pressed the heels of his palms hard against his eyes. “I knew something wasn’t kosher. Remember, Roy? Back at the springs, I said this was all a data-ghost hallucination. I didn’t want to be _right_!”

His voice swung sharply into anger; unable to stay still, Ram launched himself off the couch and started to pace like a caged animal, wishing for something to throw. It wouldn’t help, but it might make him feel better.

“Why can’t my runtime be simple for once? Why did the glitch-fragged Portal bring me here if it was just going to throw me back like some phish-trawler, laughing at my expense; Users delete me, I am sick of being dragged back and forth over these bug-bitten emotional extremes!” He raked his hands through his hair and shot a vicious glare at the ceiling, practically vibrating with pent-up anger. “Well not anymore! Not one more blasted time, you hear me? I am R-A-M _Kleinberg_ and I am not going back without a FIGHT!”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The actuary leaned against Ram's side, one hand on his shoulder to remind him he wasn't alone. He huddled all the closer at the descriptions. "That sounds like the pit cells where they kept me," he murmured to the room at large. But his brother hadn't been taken there... had he?  
  
As Ram talked, Roy had tried to call up the file history of one of the new memories. The string of transfer errors and operations that were illegal mostly because they should have been impossible told him, finally, most of what they needed to know. The kicker was the realization that the new memories were _overlaid_ on Ram's experiences since arriving on the Free Grid. There were really only a few explanations for that.  
  
He stood as well, unable to stay still, closing the disc's interface and unconsciously holding it cradled against his arm like a child. Only the presence of his two programs kept him from raging up and down the room; they'd gone through enough already without watching their User go berserk. It wasn't fair, it wasn't _right_ \--   
  
Ram did the raging instead, and Roy clung to every word, his heart seizing at the last valiant declaration. "Ram," he said almost harshly, reaching for him without waiting for an answer, his own emotions bleeding through briefly as he gripped Ram's shoulders: not a ping, exactly, but a dim flash of _no_ and _I-know_ and _can't_ and _mine_ and _stay_. "C'mere. You _are not_ a ghost, this is _real_ , we're here with you, and we're not letting you go without a fight either. We're going to Portal Control and get this worked out once and for all."  
  
It wouldn't be easy -- the Portal programs had had it worse than many during the Occupation, and had never taken kindly to the frantic demands of trapped imports they couldn't help; it was one of the reasons why they'd resisted being moved closer to the city. It hadn't been easy for Roy to talk them into letting _three_ people export to his own world when only one had been imported from there; he still hadn't convinced them to grant anyone else from 1994 passage back into the Free Grid. But they'd have to listen this time. Even they wouldn't leave Ram as some kind of mirror or copy (he refused to think _ghost_ ) living a tortuous half-life, conjoined with another self under duress in 1982 -- right?  
  
If they had to invade Ram's system like this, without backup or even a shred of a plan, so be it.  
  
He was _Roy Kleinberg_ , and nobody kept _his program_ away from him.  
  
Without Roy's knowledge or his brother's perspective, it had taken the actuary longer to catch on; he'd watched worriedly as they came to some sort of realization, but hadn't been willing to break in. But it sounded like the Portal had _copied_ the infiltrator rather than importing him, leaving the original to the pit cells and Sark, and of course they couldn't let that go on a nanocycle longer. Either way, though, a rush invasion was better than nothing. "You two go," he suggested, knowing Roy's jet was (at the moment) a two-seater. "I'll call -- someone -- and catch up with you." There was still a lot of unrest in the city, but at least one of the Trons ought to be able to catch up on the way. Maybe the first Clu also -- he had a feeling his brother would like him.   
  
Roy shook his head. "No, we'll go by Solar Sailer. Smoother ride than the jet," he added to the infiltrator, with a rueful grin, " _and_ a negative charge around the wings, so no lightning. It's slower, but it'll get us there. And you can see more of the system."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram hadn’t realised just how close _anger_ was edging to _hysteria_ until his Users’ touch pulled him back, the _familiar-unfamiliar_ sense of _protection-reassurance-presence-grounding_ clearing the infiltrator’s head. Shoulders trembled under Roy’s grip with more than just rage; returning to the source of his nightmares was necessary, likely even unavoidable, but he still gazed at Roy with a hint of childlike fear in his eyes, like he was still a beta, begging the User to make it all better. A hand gripped on Roy’s arm, giving Ram something tangible to focus on, hearing the words his User was saying, and the ones he wasn’t saying, underlain like the most base of communication.

“This is real,” he repeated, nodding shakily, and repeating it again until it was fixed in permanent memory. “This is real. I’m not hallucinating, you’re real, _this is real_. I just have to remember that, and I’ll be okay. Okay.”

Slowly, he calmed, taking a few deep breaths to cool the rise in temperature his outburst had caused. They would make a plan, and it would be a good plan – between the heads of three Kleinbergs, it could hardly be anything else. He smiled weakly at Roy’s remark.

“Why can’t anyone just keep their feet on the ground in the future?” he joked, not really feeling the humour but offering a shaky smirk as he reluctantly pulled out of Roy’s grip. “I guess I’ll go get changed then; can’t save the universe in my sleep-render.”

That would’ve been rather amusing, in a terrible way – _Hi Tron, me and my User are here to bust you out, ignore my lack of armour and shoes_. Yeah, that’d go over well. Taking his disk back from Roy, who had done a quick save-and-close of the transfer process, Ram returned to the bedroom.

Putting the armour on himself was a sight different from having it applied by the MCP’s goons. It also seemed a bit different to what he remembered. The vambraces were stronger, no open patches where a stray disk could catch and sheer open a vital energy line. The chest plate was less bulky, with fewer circuits showing through from his base render, and fit more snugly, tailored to his frame rather than a default construct. It chafed less against his circuits as he tested his range of mobility.

The helmet was still an annoyance, though. He left it for last, and carried it out as he returned to the main room, ruffling a gloved hand through his curls to straighten them out.

“Did you tweak the armour?” He asked of Roy approvingly. “I like it. Feels less like I’m a conscript and more like…heh, actually, an infiltrator.” The program gave an amused snort at the irony and then sighed, straightening his shoulders with a bravado he only half-felt. “I’m ready. We moving out?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

"And _you're_ real," Roy added, one hand moving up to the back of Ram's neck in a brief caress before letting him step back. "You _are_. You remember that." _You're real, and we won't forget._  
  
He'd been feeling unbalanced too. The look in Ram's eyes, the trapped look of a child knowing the odds but trying to pretend there could still be miracles, had taken him back to Sam's nightmares after Flynn had disappeared. But... back in his world, sixteen years before the reported average span, the miracle had managed to happen anyhow. Maybe they'd be lucky and get another one.  
  
The actuary, who'd pulled a drawer out from under the couch and started rummaging through a set of weapons, vehicles, and other useful items, grinned at his brother's next remark and quipped, "Because if you include the sky there's _exponentially_ more room to go nuts in?" Loving light-jets himself, he wondered whether the correction of his brother's balance problems might make him feel better about flying. But if not, well... Sailers were certainly steadier than jets, and he and Roy would be there to keep Ram's mind off it.  
  
Roy had handed back the disc, his mind already on what they were going to say at the Portal, before the infiltrator's last words registered; the mental image startled him into laughter. "That'd be something," he gasped. "Look out, it's the invasion of the Pajama Patrol!" His amusement set the actuary off too, and their giggles followed Ram out the door.  
  
  
As it happened, no one the Grid's Ram knew from Security was readily available, and he and Roy decided not to call in a stranger for a trip into a world none of them were completely prepared for. They did assemble a few other things -- batons loaded with useful functions, hack grenades and stun grenades, compatibility add-ons in case of transfer problems, their own sets of armor (black for the actuary, stealth-greys for the User), and all the information the actuary had on his home system and the layout of ENCOM's Game Grid. When XR returned, Roy stood from his seat by the wall console, where he'd been looking up transport information -- a diagram of a Solar Sailer glittered there, majestic even in wireframe -- and he and the other program moved over to meet him.  
  
"Yeah, I added a few things," Roy answered, with a surge of self-conscious but vivid pride. Ram looked _good_ in the new armor. Unsure, maybe, but ready -- and armored with the best protection that Roy had been able to provide for him.  
  
"Here, load up," grinned the actuary, handing his brother a couple of batons, devices, and compressed energy bars for the road. "You're not gonna believe what some of these things do. I'll show you on the way."  
  
Looking from one program to the other, feeling that tingle in the spine that he usually got when a dangerous op was in progress, Roy nodded. He didn't want to be ready. He'd have preferred to lock all the doors, holler for help from every User he knew, and try to fix everything without putting Ram in danger. But even without the read-only errors and their many ominous implications, the pain that Ram's phantom double was going through in the other world took that option off the table. They _had_ to go in.  
  
"Let's move."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The bewildered blink as his brother unexpectedly dumped a load of supplies into his arms was almost comical. It was also short-lived, as the seriousness of the situation fell upon all of their shoulders. Ram looked from his brother, to his User, and almost shivered with the sensation of anxious anticipation that worked its way through his binary makeup.

With a determined nod, he followed his doubles out of the apartment complex, as he worked out just how to stash all the supplies in his armour without losing any of it. He didn’t quite succeed.

“Ugh, hold up a nano,” he muttered in the lobby, and bent down to pick up the baton he’d dropped as Ram and Roy paused at the doors. As his palm closed around the device his fingers spasmed slightly, a twinge of pain skittering over his motor functions. Straightening up from his crouch, Ram stashed the baton on his hip with his other hand, studying his palm with a look of mild concern. Was it his imagination, or was the faded scar darkening again?

No time to worry about it; the mission was more important. He hurried to catch up to the others.

It turned out that taking the system’s monorail was a bit faster than travelling solely by bike, and afforded a chance to discuss plans and debrief their bemused visitor on the use of some of the esoteric tools Ram from stats had burdened him with. Even so, they ran out of things to discuss midway through the trip. As the tension grew thicker the closer they got to the Sailer docks, Ram grew quieter, staring out the window at the city as it flickered past in a blur of blue and white, a knee tucked up against his chest as he leaned against Roy’s shoulder.

The feeling of anxiety that had gripped him in the apartment had not gone away, and he was loath to admit it was making him feel light-headed. He needed to be on top of his game for this rescue effort, especially since it was _him_ they were rescuing.

His palm twinged again. Without awareness of the action, Ram started tracing his thumb along the scarring, trying to rub away the discomfort.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram-the-actuary had trailed behind his brother, deftly catching one of the energy bars as it slipped off the pile and returning it with a grin, but had already gone ahead when the baton fell too; he paused to wait, missing the twitch as he glanced over at their User for guidance. Roy, though, didn't miss it, or the way the infiltrator had looked at his palm afterward. He'd spent too much time on that scar to forget it easily.  
  
He didn't press the point when Ram rejoined them, but looped a hand around his arm as the actuary showed him how to attach the baton to its regular place. If it happened again, he'd ask about it. _Please, Ram, tell me if something's wrong._  
  
The light rail's advantages, besides avoiding the possibility of being accidentally split up by traffic, included a fantastic view of Tron City as the train ran over, under, and occasionally through the middles of hundreds of skyscrapers on the way to the Sailer dock. But it did eventually leave them with nothing to do, and Roy, knowing well his own tendency to fret, wrapped his arm around Ram to keep him close.  
  
It was probably lucky the train was fairly well deserted. Ram didn't take this route very often, and the last program not heading for the dock had debarked a couple of stations ago. It was just them in the compartment, Ram in the window-seat, Roy beside him, and Ram's brother in the reversed seat in front of them, his feet stretched out to tangle with theirs (and keeping an eye out for one of the buildings bearing Tron's pattern, a convenient local landmark which he was sure would give the infiltrator a thrill).  
  
...and Ram's hand was moving again. Roy bit his lip, fought the concern out of his voice, and said quietly, "Feeling alright?"

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram glanced away from the scenery that had thoroughly distracted him for the past few microcycles to give Roy a hesitantly reassuring smile. “Sure, Roy.”

But he _wasn’t_ feeling all right, and he wasn’t being a very good liar if the User had noticed his discomfort. The smile dropped off as he lowered his gaze, a quiet tightness in his eyes as he flexed his fingers. He swallowed slightly and shook his head. “…I…my hand hurts again.”

There was a waver in his quiet voice, and he allowed Roy to take the hand for inspection, but there were no physical signs of new or worsening code degradation that could explain the renewed spikes of discomfort in his receptors, or the unmentioned sense of _distance_ yawning at the edge of his awareness. Nerves would explain it; he was about to return to the place he had received the wound, and that would mess with anyone’s head.

He tried to smile sheepishly as he withdrew his hand, attempted an embarrassed sort of laugh as he balled it into a fist and tucked it into his lap. “It’s probably that I’m just picking at it too much. I need to break that habit.” Yet Ram had a feeling it wasn’t quite so simple. He felt stretched thin, like a filament drawn taut almost to breaking-point.

Just how far that breaking point was, he was loath to find out.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Roy had never been particularly good at lies he wasn't comfortable with either. He took Ram's hand, murmuring soothingly, and examined the scar, his other arm still tight around the program's shoulder. It was frustrating to find no visible or perceptible change in the scar, other than the bare fact of Ram's pain. "Does it feel like anything's happening over there?" he asked quietly. "Could you tell me if any new memories come up? They might help us figure out where to go when we get there." And it would be better for Ram not to hold what hurt him so close to his chest.  
  
He had to smile at the attempted explanation, rubbing his program's shoulder and gently infusing a little energy into the hand before releasing it. "I'd tell you to stop picking at it or it'll never get better, but that's Gramma K's line. She always says stuff like that. Drives us all nuts, trying to get her to stop worrying."  
  
Some things, apparently, just ran in the family.  
  
Ram-the-actuary took that moment to point out the Tron tower, bouncing in his seat and leaning over to pat his brother's knee. It might have felt like a good sign, if either of them believed in that stuff -- almost like Tron's spirit, his courage, would be going with them to that other world.  
  
As much as each was trying to spare the others, though -- perhaps because their configurations were so close, perhaps simply because of the situation -- the same ominous mood had settled over all of them. The actuary's fingers were itching for his disc, and Roy sighed and rested his head against the infiltrator's hair for a moment, inwardly pleading with the multiverse and whatever lay beyond for whatever shred of grace it could offer them.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Ram’s only response was a shake of the head; there hadn’t been any new flashes to overtake his working memory, not since Roy had finished the file transfer. The fretful allusion to a User Roy knew made Ram chuckle weakly. ‘Gramma K’ seemed like someone he would’ve enjoyed meeting, if the fondness in Roy’s voice was any indication.

His brother brought a welcome distraction in pointing out a particular piece of landscape, and Ram boggled at the sight of the great skyscraper plastered with the familiar 4-square design. He may have muttered something about stroking Tron’s ego, but the humour was only half-felt.

It wasn’t long after the Tron tower disappeared from their sightline that the train began slowing to a stop. Distracted as he was, Ram barely noticed the prim voice of the driving program announcing that they had reached their destination, and to please watch their step as they disembarked. As Roy and Ram gathered the supplies, the infiltrator looked down at the helmet resting in his lap. After a moment, a decision gate was reached, and he tugged it down over his curls, rising to follow the others.


	15. Chapter 15

The Solar Sailer platform was as empty as the train had been, the next load not departing for a few microcycles, and Ram moderated his pace, disguising his slower stride as intentional rather than an effort to keep his balance. If he could keep up appearances for a little while longer, he could avoid worrying the others.

He was only a few measures away from the boarding platform when the first metaphysical filament snapped. A feeling of gridbugs crawling over skin shuddered through Ram’s frame, drawing him short of breath. He dropped the pack he had been carrying with a clatter as a second shudder wracked him, leaning heavily against a support pillar on the platform’s edge, arms wrapped tightly around his chest as if he could hold his code together through brute force alone. Even so, the feeling of emptiness was starting to grow exponentially, the world around him swimming in a haze of visually deresolved artefacts.

“Roy–” he choked out with frightened alarm, but whatever he had been about to say was stolen as the final tether broke. Blackness and the sensation of falling through sand swamped his awareness.

To the other persons on the platform, Ram was there one moment…and gone the next, flickering in a static pixelation of binary code like a bad television feed before the infiltrator vanished into the ether.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

It wasn't a matter of keeping up appearances. Under the circumstances, Ram would have had to be crazy to feel no concern about where they were going, and both his brother and Roy knew it and stuck close to him as they left the train. The actuary was pointing to the Solar Sailer, its faceted wings unfurling in the light of its beam, and Roy, rolling his shoulders as his pack slipped a little, was searching for something to say, anything that might ease his program's fear. Anything he hadn't said already was out of his power to promise.  
  
They were right with him when he faltered.  
  
They both turned to him, struck by the fear in his voice as he staggered -- his brother at his side, exclaiming in alarm, reaching for him, trying to hold him up; Roy gripping his arms as though to ground him and keep him there by sheer will.  
  
"Ram--?" The User's voice caught, panic edging in again, expecting another flashback attack or memory error, further worried -- no, scared -- at the distant, unseeing terror in Ram's eyes. "Ram, hang on, what's--"  
  
\--the program's voice cut him off, and then... then Ram was just gone, melting like snow between Roy's hands, too fast to do anything, too fast to understand. Gone, without a ghost of a trace, leaving nothing behind for them to follow. Gone from the platform, gone from the system.... just gone.  
  
  
  
Roy might have made a sound; he didn't remember later. He remembered the cool material of the strut as he leaned on it, the actuary's bruising grip on his arm, and the feeling like a stone in his chest as they held onto one another. He remembered, inconsequentially, the sting of power deep in the platform when he scanned it (expecting nothing, finding just that) and his control momentarily slipped, remembered his other program kneeling beside him, remembered a confused dock worker wandering over to see what was up and leaving just as confused. Remembered the look in Ram's eyes -- that above all else -- as he flew back to his flat for the records they'd made; remembered the look in the actuary's eyes as he stayed behind to watch the platform in case of a miracle neither was expecting anymore.  
  
He remembered leaving the Sailer in mid-flight to check the energy pools, and returning to sit at the prow of the ship with his head between his knees, unsure how much longer he could go without finding something to break. And he remembered every word spoken at Portal Control as the lack of hard data or readable transport logs defeated them all, and being surprised when Emara's arms came around him, until he realized he'd started crying.  
  
  
  
"We don't," the actuary told him later, clumped up on the couch with his arms around his knees. "Not all of us -- I mean, some people did for a while after word got around how Users do it, but you can't -- I mean, everyone's voxels are the same in the end. This is what counts."  
  
The ghostly face above the program's disc flickered dimly; then it blurred, and Roy had to blink it back into focus. The other Ram's disc had gone with him; they didn't even have that.  
  
"When someone's dead, we let them go," said Ram softly. "Everything that was really them... they go back to the system. That's how it worked at ENCOM too. Anything physical... with us, that's just stuff, so there's nothing really left to bury."  
  
"So." Roy swallowed. Something in his eye; something in his throat. Just another day on the Grid. "It's a good thing he's not dead."  
  
"Yeah," said the actuary, with a watery smile. "But--"  
  
He paused, searched for the words honesty wouldn't let him leave unsaid, until Roy understood and found them instead.  
  
"--It's harder when they just disappear."  
  
Ram nodded, his head bowing as he let his profile vanish back into the disc, and Roy reached over to close his hand around the curve of it and pull the program tightly against him.  
  
"I know."

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Darkness.

Darkness, fading slowly in dimly lit walls. Gray, flat, featureless. Blurry, until he blinked. A quiet sound escaped his vox, eyes slipping shut again. He ached.

What had he been doing?

“You’re awake.”

The toneless female voice drew his eyes open again. A ghostly figure swam into focus, impassionate face staring down at him with apathy. Red circuits, marked with a medic’s identifier. Familiar.

“Soli…?”

His voice-box rasped, parched of lubrication. A glass was pressed to his lips. He drank of the contents, gagged on the tepid, weak mixture, drank more. Couldn’t be picky in the compound.

He remembered her now. Soli, the medic who had tended the nameless rider. He felt a pang of sorrow for her, trapped in the blank, emotionless apathy of appropriation.

“S- _sstch_ ,” [ _status-query_ ,] he pinged when his voice skipped. Her head tilted, unnaturally so, no fluidity of motion in the gesture.

“Conscript identified as Ram-RK78206, designated [ _threat level.7_ ]. 70% decompilation occurring 2.8 centicycles ago. Shutdown initiated. Conscript Ram-RK78206 removed to isolation. Basic repairs to code completed .04 centicycles ago. Reboot 2 microcycles ago. Conscript Ram-RK78206 will be returned to Function: Games upon rebooting.”

Ram shuddered at the monotone that listed his immediate fate and slowly pushed up into a seated position. The act made his head swim. He clutched at it with a groan, and then winced, yanking his hand back as pain shot through his arm. A scar bisected his palm, ragged and gray, cracked red at the edges. Damage from his disk. He grimaced; it would probably never heal right, not without R_Kleinberg7’s intervention.

The thought of his User brought an unexpected ache of _grief_ to his core, a gaping chasm of blankness in his mind so profound that he sucked in a gasp of air. A gloved hand pressed to his centre, clutching the armour, dingy and damaged. He sought his memory files for answers, but found nothing. No whisper of what had gone on since he had blacked out under Sark’s care. Nothing that could explain the feeling.

All he knew was that he had _lost_ something _important_.

“Th-thank you Soli,” he mumbled. He barely registered her leaving the pit cell. Eyes tracked around the confinement, taking in dimly glowing force fields, blank walls, the footsteps of guards overhead. Isolation, Soli had said. No compound. No companionship. No Tron.

Slowly, he drew his legs up to his chest, hugged them tight, and tucked his head in the shelter of his arms.

There wasn’t anyone to see the first silent tears fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, we reach the end, bittersweet as it is. All of Roy's upgrades and repairs did not follow Ram back to his home system, so the scar remains, the injuries, losing the memories of that better world. But fear not for Ram, this isn't the end. Those memories await him on the Grid, stored safe in Roy's possession. And for those on the Grid, they will see him again, someday. (I may post that reintroduction thread, though possibly not attached to the Ram Expanded series.) 
> 
> If you have enjoyed this thread archive, my name is Kes and I am pleased to have entertained you on this roller-coaster ride of angst. If you did not enjoy it, then my name is Bob and this is Disney's Jungle Cruise.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. :)


End file.
